Dr Manju Antil (Counselling Psychologist and Psychotherapist)

Sometime we often heard proclamations that “somebody doesn’t adjust to circumstance” or “somebody faces a crisis in adjustment”. So often, a question arising to mind, what is an adjustment and how the adjustment affects life? Adjustment is an essential characteristic required to live peacefully on this planet. In other words, we can say that adjustment is the procedure of arriving at an equitable state among the need of individual and their satisfaction. School and home play a crucial role in the adjustment of an individual.

Originally the concept of Adjustment was taken from biology and the concept of adjustment was a cornerstone in Darwin’s theory of evolution. But in biology the term usually employed was adaptation. According to biologists, only that organism can survive who adopts in the hazards of the physical world. Richard S . Lazarus narrates that the concept of adaption has been borrowed by the psychologist and renamed as adjustment.

Encyclopedia Britannica (1768, Vol. I) according to the psychological point defined it as a behavioural procedure by which an individual sustains equilibrium between different requirements that he meets at the current time and the obstacles between them. Each and every situation of life insists that the concerned person should perform effectively according to guiding principles and should be able to strike a steadiness among diverse forces. Adjustment is the process in which one builds variations in the behaviour to attain solidarity with oneself, others or the environment with an objective to maintain the state of moderation between the sole and the environment.

The vocabulary elucidation of "adjustment" is to influence proper, to adjust, mastermind, adjust, blend or make a journalist. In this way change between two things implies enhance either of them to compare to each other. For example: driving of garment as indicated by the atmosphere. As we can't change the atmosphere so we need to adjust our fabrics. Oxford Dictionary expressed the significance of change as to orchestrate, to put all together, to blend disparities or to adjust to standard or reason. Similarly, Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary likewise expressed that the change is the procedure to accomplish mental or behaviorally adjust between one's own particular needs and requests of different accordingly the individual place himself into a tasteful state. These undertones of term modification educate us regarding the mental and sociological ramifications of change.

This leads to explore the dealings of the person with the external world. If the affinity among the person and his/ her surroundings is in harmony with the standards then the adjustment is achieved. Then the behaviour of the concerned person would be considered normal. Overall deviation from the norms demands clinical examinations and interventions. These deviations are known as maladjustment. And if deviations are more severe then it leads individuals towards abnormal behaviour. Adjustment problem starts right from disequilibrium between needs and outcomes and continues if not resolved till tomb i.e. death. Home, School, college, University and administrative centres are the places where we need to give up little of our demands and accept what is present. Education plays a dominant role in the process of acquiring purposeful adjustment. The major objective of education is to prepare children to cope effectively with their life’s social, economic and personal problems.