Boarding School Syndrome | 28 November 2015 | In London

Post-Jungian and Psychoanalytic Perspectives

Speaker: Joy Schaverien, Respondent: Francis Grier, Chair: Catherine Crowther

This conference follows the publication in June this year of Joy Schaverien’s book Boarding School Syndrome: The Psychological Trauma of the Privileged Child Some of the themes from the book will be explored in this half-day conference. The aim is to consider working analytically with those affected and to create a clinically focussed discourse.   The tradition of the British Establishment of sending their young children away from home to be educated may be seen as a bizarre form of conditioning with enduring psychological and social consequences. Children left at a young age in boarding school may suffer profound emotional deprivation. The initial losses, of home and family, constitute a significant but unseen bereavement. For some bullying and abuse, conducted by staff or older children, may compound the distress and terror of abandonment. These multiple wounds may produce a form of dissociative amnesia where the true self retracts.

As adults ex-boarders may present in the consulting room as successful in professional life and with a veneer of social ease. The psychotherapist needs to be alert and proactive in recognising the clinical presentation. Clients may be unaware that their depression or difficulties with intimate relationships follow from this early emotional trauma. It is hoped to create space for reflection and to stimulate lively discussion.