Overview

Boarding School Syndrome is an analysis of the trauma of the 'privileged' child sent to boarding school at a young age. Innovative and challenging, Joy Schaverien offers a psychological analysis of the long-established British and colonial preparatory and public boarding school tradition. Richly illustrated with pictures and the narratives of adult ex-boarders in psychotherapy, the book demonstrates how some forms of enduring distress in adult life may be traced back to the early losses of home and family. Developed from clinical research and informed by attachment and child development theories 'Boarding School Syndrome' is a new term that offers a theoretical framework on which the psychotherapeutic treatment of ex-boarders may build. Divided into four parts, History: In the Name of Privilege; Exile and Healing; Broken Attachments: A Hidden Trauma, and The Boarding School Body, the book includes vivid case studies of ex-boarders in psychotherapy. Their accounts reveal details of the suffering endured: loss, bereavement and captivity are sometimes compounded by physical, sexual and psychological abuse. Here, Joy Schaverien shows how many boarders adopt unconscious coping strategies including dissociative amnesia resulting in a psychological split between the 'home self' and the 'boarding school self'. This pattern may continue into adult life, causing difficulties in intimate relationships, generalized depression and separation anxiety amongst other forms of psychological distress. Boarding School Syndrome demonstrates how boarding school may damage those it is meant to be a reward and discusses the wider implications of this tradition. It will be essential reading for psychoanalysts, Jungian analysts, psychotherapists, art psychotherapists, counsellors and others interested in the psychological, cultural and international legacy of this tradition including ex-boarders and their partners.

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9781317506591

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Reviews

Therapists of all persuasions have been eagerly awaiting Joy Schaverien's book on Boarding School Syndrome. The political, cultural and social significance of individuals that attended such schools is obvious, and the book is a deep contribution to an important public conversation. Yet it is also a compassionate clinical approach to the suffering of such 'privileged' people of both sexes. This beautifully written, lucid and clinically revelatory book is relevant to work with all clients and patients who have been 'looked after' right across the social spectrum - and maybe even to those who have not. A must read work that is going to spark intense discussion within the field - and outside the clinical world as well. - Andrew Samuels, Professor of Analytical Psychology, University of Essex In this thoughtful and sensitive analysis, Professor Schaverien skilfully adapts a qualitative clinical research approach to explore the inner world of trauma of the boarding school child, occasioned by too early a rupture of the attachment bond with the mother, and the potentially damaging developmental trajectory brought about by being abandoned into the 'privileged' world of boarding school. Schaverien's exceptional book cogently challenges long held assumptions concerning the value of such an education. She incorporates some of the best of current neurobiological and trauma research to explore the pain and distress of parents as well as child and to offer clinicians valuable insights into the process of healing the minds of adult patients damaged by 'boarding school syndrome'. - Margaret Wilkinson, Training Analyst, The Society of Analytical Psychology, London. Author of Coming into Mind (Routledge, 2006) and Changing Minds in Therapy (Norton, 2010).

...Schaverien, a Jungian psychoanalyst, did not go to boarding school: it was as a practitioner that she became intrigued, noting how often boarding school featured in the past of surprising numbers of her patients. That makes her book - an academic work, academically priced, though a gripping read - all the more important...Schaverien brings a clear eye and the experience of 25 years of collecting data to an issue that should concern everyone worried about how children fare in professional care - which, of course, is what boarding school is. Alex Renton, the Observer Therapists of all persuasions have been eagerly awaiting Joy Schaverien's book on Boarding School Syndrome. The political, cultural and social significance of individuals that attended such schools is obvious, and the book is a deep contribution to an important public conversation. Yet it is also a compassionate clinical approach to the suffering of such 'privileged' people of both sexes. This beautifully written, lucid and clinically revelatory book is relevant to work with all clients and patients who have been 'looked after' right across the social spectrum - and maybe even to those who have not. A must read work that is going to spark intense discussion within the field - and outside the clinical world as well. - Andrew Samuels, Professor of Analytical Psychology, University of Essex In this thoughtful and sensitive analysis, Professor Schaverien skilfully adapts a qualitative clinical research approach to explore the inner world of trauma of the boarding school child, occasioned by too early a rupture of the attachment bond with the mother, and the potentially damaging developmental trajectory brought about by being abandoned into the 'privileged' world of boarding school. Schaverien's exceptional book cogently challenges long held assumptions concerning the value of such an education. She incorporates some of the best of current neurobiological and trauma research to explore the pain and distress of parents as well as child and to offer clinicians valuable insights into the process of healing the minds of adult patients damaged by 'boarding school syndrome'. - Margaret Wilkinson, Training Analyst, The Society of Analytical Psychology, London. Author of Coming into Mind (Routledge, 2006) and Changing Minds in Therapy (Norton, 2010).

Author Information

Joy Schaverien, is a Jungian psychoanalyst, a training analyst of the Society of Analytical Psychology (London), a member of the International Association of Analytical Psychology and Visiting Professor in Art Psychotherapy in Sheffield. Her many publications include Gender, Countertransference and the Erotic Transference (Routledge, 2006).

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