Boarding School Syndrome: In Conversation with Joy Schaverien
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- Опубликовано: 3 июн 2024
- In her book, 'Boarding School Syndrome: The Psychological Trauma of the “Privileged” Child' Joy Schaverien identified a cluster of symptoms and behaviours, which she classified as ‘Boarding School Syndrome’. The premise is that children sent to boarding school at an early age suffer the sudden and irrevocable loss of their primary attachments and this constitutes a significant trauma. The children are also unsafe because, in some schools, they are at the mercy of bullies and sexual predators.
To adapt to the system, a defensive and protective encapsulation of the self may be acquired; the true identity of the person then remains hidden. This pattern may continue into adult life, distorting intimate relationships. In psychotherapy, the transference dynamics may replay the hidden childhood trauma of repeated losses. Based on additional clinical material the talk will draw attention to the ways in which this syndrome may present in psychotherapy. It will give a sense of the depth of trauma, including sexual abuse, which is often missed when a patient mentions they attended a boarding school.
Professor Joy Schaverien, PhD , is a Training Analyst of the Society of Analytical Psychology (London) with a private analytic and supervisory practice in the East Midlands. She is Visiting Professor for the Northern Programme for Art Psychotherapy and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Analytical Psychology. She has published extensively on topics related to art and analytical psychology and her recent books include: 'The Dying Patient in Psychotherapy' (a single case study of an erotic transference/countertransference, which is soon to be republished by Routledge) and 'Boarding School Syndrome: The Psychological Trauma of the ‘Privileged’ Child' (June 2015), which was a Routledge and Amazon bestseller.
Joanna de Waal is a Jungian Analyst and member of the British Psychotherapy Foundation. She teaches on the West Midlands Institute of Psychotherapy Jungian Adult training and the BPF Jungian Adult Training. A trained teacher and singer she has worked at Wormwood Scrubs Prison, the Tate, Crisis and various mental health and community organizations as a music practitioner and performer with a primary focus on voice. She currently lives and works in private practice in Oxford, UK.
Book your tickets for our upcoming event in Oxford here: www.britishpsychotherapyfound...
I was sent to a "not so privileged" boarding school at the age of 8 and it has some upsides in terms of tweaking your surviving skills to the max but the downside is that now you are a dead man walking with no soul because you disassociate yourself for so long as a kid to avoid the pain of the sheer trauma that you cant feel anything anymore. Its sad.
How strange it is to hear someone say that boarding school is a 'prison' because that has always been my thought of my experience of my time at boarding school, I absolutely recognise the categories Abandonment, Bereavement, Captivity.
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I was sent to boarding school as a young girl just turned 8, it was 1969. My older brother was with me but we were segregated almost immediately. Something fractured inside me that day and kept on breaking. Joy Schaverian describes the trauma brilliantly and succinctly. I put it down to my own resilience and deep love of my partner , and the joy of 3 grown up children that I do not think about the horror and fear of it all every day, not every day.We lived in Borneo so because of costs I only saw my parents twice a year, which meant visiting expats we were farmed ut to other people or had the crushing shame of behind left in the dining hall when everyone else had gone. My parents are still alive at 95 and have never been open to talking about what it did to me. I love them but I hate them so much too. They adopted us soon after birth, why do that just to send your children away? Never understood or forgave that one.
My older brother died in a car crash at age 21 , he ran away 3 times with nowhere to go. I never knew why but I wonder now. I would have walked away from my parents then if he had not died but I am not an unkind person and my younger brother was busy building his own brick wall around himself so I stayed not realising the feeling I had of drowning inside in future years was my childhood.
I have been to hours and hours of therapy, it helps at the time - to dampen it all down a bit , but its always there and it always comes back.To anyone out there who feels like me, and I know there are many, even though you feel alone in your grief, betrayal and rage - you are not, I hope that helps a little.
I was sent away aged 10. I'm 45 now and still can't get the whole thing out of my head. And I know and speak to several people from similar backgrounds who are so severely stunted they are just plain not coping.
*One just wakes up only to go fishing
*Another wanks himself all day
*Yet another says consist only of leaving the house for work and straight back, can't bear to be seperated from his children.
*Another is a 50 year old bachelor who just can't make the next step but hopes to soon.
* Should I go on?
And we suffer alone in silence.
May this video show there are people who care. I’m here because my 62 year old husband was at boarding school for several elementary years into middle school and then sent from parents to live with a grandparent to finish high school.
I’m trying to understand the communication issues we are having 23 years into marriage. I’ve just now at 47 realized I bet his years at boarding school and abandonment (even though it wasn’t the intention of parents) have greatly affected his psyche.
He seemed to have an overall positive relationship with his parents. But I only saw it with him as an independent adult. Not as a child.
The thing I remember most about my first day of boarding school was a whole dorm full of boys crying. My mum said I could go back home if I didn't like it after half term, but I was sent back. I felt so betrayed. It has had a long term effect on my ability to form normal adult relationships and I have had a lot of quite severe mental health issues which definitely started at boarding school..
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I was sent to boarding school 3 months short of my 4th birthday after my mother passed. Its only decades later that I realize how searing the experience was.
I went to a boarding school from age 12 until 17. Everything said here is correct. I am not saying that some people did not have a positive experience, but one thing that amazed me were the number of people when I met up with them later in life who I thought would say the experience was positive, but in fact the reality for them was very different. This included both head prefects of my year - both the male and the female (my school was co-educational). The shock of the first day of boarding school is difficult to describe. And as Dr Schaverian says, that was relived, over and over, each time I returned. I would also say some of the feelings of the first day were a bit like the time when my parents separated and suddenly I found a 'step-father 'replaced my real father. It's a feeling of not understanding what is going on and being helpless to talk to anyone about it. You simply weren't believed.I did very "well" at boarding school. And went to Cambridge. But was it worth all that? I don't think so.
This is exactly what happened to me too...
Well said. Prep school (Prior Park, Wilts) taught me to put on a "brave face" when I felt anything but and, at 60, I'm still pretty much the same: never wanting a loved one to worry about me. Of course the terrible irony is that suggests something is amiss. And on and on.
@@kevinwhelan9607 "Putting a brave face " as you put it perfectly ,says it all about an appalling system which negates the feelings of children .They must be reared to stick to a so-called ideal of a class society which rather looks dated .
I went to boarding school in the 1990s and only now am I starting to realise how damaging my time there may have been and how it potentially could be at the root of many of the psychological and emotional problems I currently have in my life. So much of what Joy Schaverien discusses in this video feels so personal and true to my own experience it's almost frightening.
It seems as if people commenting on here did not really watch the video before commenting. She says school can’t replace the love you should be receiving from your parents and that’s true no matter how lovely your teachers and peers are. Social animals like bonobos etc need a human carer if they lose their mothers because love and contact is incredibly important for their physical, emotional and mental development. Surely humans need just as much care. As with any life experience, not everyone will experience it the same way.
Cheep is the sound a bird makes.
I am a former boarder who is now in college. I totally agree with what Dr. Schaverien said. I think part of the reason why we don't understand our trauma is that we are often told "Wow, you went to boarding school? I've seen XYZ about boarding school in shows" or "wow, you must be so privileged". While I do admit many of us are privileged, it doesn't mean that is trauma is any less real. I felt like C or captivity was really the thing that caused most of my BSS as I was isolated in the middle of the woods and could not leave the campus, and if we were outside and even attempted anything faster than a brisk walk we were tackled to the ground for "attempting to runaway".
Boarding school can be a relief from a difficult dynamic at home AND traumatising for all of the reasons mentioned above.
A dysfunctional family can impact on your boarding school life and vice versa. Having to compartmentalise causes alot of stress and anxiety. I'm 60 and still trying to make sense of it on my own. And there was not pastoral care in my time. I couldn't confide in my housemaster or Matron.
@@tomfaulkner6616 maybe 'making sense of it on your own' is a learned behaviour that is part of the problem for ex-boarders? We learn to cope on our own as kids but lose the capacity to trust and confide in others. I'm sure it's helpful to get things off your chest if you can, by talking to a therapist or someone who won't judge you.
@@ravenorama I have had regular counselling for over 20 years. Including 14 years with one counsellor. But alot of it involved my living with and looking after an alcoholic mother for 25 years and my relation ship with a controlling father and then after he died also living with a brother with similar traits. Somehow the specific problems relating to boarding school have ben subsumed by these more immediate concerns. It now being 42 years since I left school.
ITS THE MOST TRAUMATISING THING. TEACHERS NEVER DIOGNOSED MY MENTAL ILLNESS AND TOOK ME FOR LAZY.
I feel really sorry for you
Joy speaks with knowledge, sensitivity and awareness of this trauma. I was scarred for life by my first boarding school (sent aged 11 in the 1960s/70s) - had lifelong related anxiety issues. If you are a sensitive child the experience is a form of torture. I recognise so well the ABCD. From my arrival at prison I was numb: I spent the whole first term in a state of weird , anguished detachment : I couldn't return to the "me" my little self knew. Now I understand that I was traumatised. There was a lot of nastiness at that all-girls school. One incident I will never forget was being sick in my dormitory-struggling to reach the bathroom, but throwing up repeatedly all over the dormitory floor. The other girls thought it wildly funny, and teased and humiliated me.. Later a cartoon of me throwing up was passed around the school to the amusement of many. i was ill because of petit mal epilepsy brought on by stress. This was mild bullying compared to some events at the school. I was taken away eventually. Luckily my second school was progressive: far kinder, creative and more relaxed.
I really appreciated the space Dr Schaverien had in this interview to articulate her understanding of the separation trauma that accompanies young boarding. In previous interviews where someone pro boarding has been present the conversation has been steered towards specific incidents of abuse and how measures have been implemented to prevent these. Whilst I applaud the intention to tackle all forms of abuse it seems to me that incidents are the only way the pro boarders and the public in general understand abuse. Tragically the underlying issue of abandonment is not being addressed. This conversation is therefore one of great importance. I was sent to Ludgrove School aged 7 and later Harrow School aged 13. It took many years of psychoanalysis before I could lower my defences and begin to understand as well as re-live the emotionally crippling experiences of being left to fend for myself in these strange and terrifying environments that had become overnight and without warning my new family and new home.
Watching this I am reminded of the work of Dr Pauline Boss who coined the term ambiguous loss to define the grief suffered by immigrants who must grieve the loss of their identity and homeland. I have a sense that a child sent away to boarding school at a young age becomes in effect a stateless immigrant or refugee in his new "adopted" country - the boarding school. To be subjected to this ejection from home life, from the child's "garden of Even" to the refugee camp of the school is a severe trauma made worse by the transitional, liminal state of the accommodation. I was sent away from home at age 4 and lived in this "liminal" transit camp for refugees (aka English boarding school) from the age of 4 until 18. B is for bereavement, thank you Joy for reminding me of this.
I recognise the term prison because that is how I viewed my time there.
As a weekly boarder from 13 to 16. I am in my 40s now and found answers to my mental health issues from learning about this recently.
That’s so great! I wish my husband could seek out help.
I went to boarding school from 7 years old. I'm 46 now. I've had therapy since i was 30 but am only just beginning feel settled and understand the impact the trauma of boarding school had on my development and ability to relate to others. Thank you Joy, your work has really helped me.
There are/were other boarding schools other than the privileged elite and expensive traditional same sex boarding schools. I went to one, a co-ed with a mix of day students and boarders (a recipe for disaster) in the Lake District in the early 1970's - I was 11. What happened in that environment affected me for many years that followed. I don't know if I have a syndrome but I definitely identify with the ABCD talked about here. The worst years that shaped and changed my life. It was no Enid Blyton Malory Towers as I naively thought it would be.
Jackie : It wasn't at Keswick by any chance ? My younger Sister was a Boarder and she absolutely hated it. She later married a Greek Millionaire and the Boarding Department when they got wind of this even had the cheek to ask her for Donations to the School !
I wonder if this is why a large number of Etonians end up being psychopaths sociopathic etc
Prime ministers.
I went to boarding school from 11 - 18 years old, as a gay woman I had to hide and it made me hide every part of myself away. All I did was study. They took our phones away for the first week so that we wouldn't talk to our parents in order to break emotional bonds. This really hit me hard.
My boy went to boarding school and is in therapy for boarding school syndrome. It plays havoc with his ability to maintain and connect in relationships. He’s avoidant in many ways and because of the captivity craves his freedom and defo puts friends before family. He struggles with deep connections with female but wants them. He shuts down easily and has to fill his time constantly
A - abandonment; B - bereavement; C - captivity; D - dissociation; E - exile; F - friends + fun (instead of family); you do make great friends at boarding school. T - traumatic re-enactment. rinse & repeat.
My husband was at British boarding school for elementary and middle school in Zambia, Africa. America parents were bush missionaries.
I’m finally realizing after 23 years of marriage how it has likely affected him and our communication.
Interestingly we together chose home education for our children. When I watch him with our children, I think of how he didn’t have that during the school year as a child & how hard that must have been.
Really insightful conversation. Thank you for sharing.
A lot of what is said is correct. this might open up the debate on private education, and also boarding schooling. The psychological implications and the ABC I can agree with. I went to prep school and then public school in Scotland. It was a very hostile environment.
As a Dutchy, whose country doesn't know boarding schools as much as the large number of them in Britain, plus the influence of a class system, I've lived in Britain for almost 5 years, and my landlord is an example of a boarding school kid, sent away from home at the age of 8. His social skills were awkward, with an inhibition so strong, that it was hard to feel any humane common ground in the relationship.
He wasn't cold-hearted, for in his actions and choices he showed kindness. It was a very strange experience for me, to meet a man from the upper class (as he felt himself to be) able to be polite, very formal, never sharing his feelings, and always placing his opinion as nr. 1. As if his identity depended on being right, arguing always
Often dismissing or contradicting those of his children, or correcting them, so that his children were painfully aware of the fact that they couldn't feel acknowledged, and relaxed in his company. All people around him felt a cold detachedness, without being able to relax. His wife started drinking after 10 years of marriage, with 5 kids to raise. I believe this man was and to this day, is traumatized by this form of education
We don’t have many boarding schools in Canada. The concept is foreign to most of us. It’s endlessly fascinating as a fictional world!
Absolutely.
Interesting to come back to this and to recognise the ABCD of boarding school experience. I have to say that I did not have specific abuse to deal with during my time at a largely boys public school but there was still a considerable amount of psychological trauma maybe short of bullying that has taken me over 40 years to try and recognise and even start to deal with. Despite all the years of therapy I have had I have only come across boarding school syndrome very recently and I seem to have glossed over the traumas connected to those teenage years and the subsequent fall out in the intervening years. My siblings and me all went to the same school, I was the eldest, but have not talked much about it except in passing and matter of factly. My parents did not board and took widely differing views on sending us there which didnt help.
I went to Betteshanger Prep in Kent and I do remember my first day as I arrived after term started by train from London. There were elements I didn't like however the matrons were motherly or perhaps grand motherly and our dormitories were small only 6 beds or so. Generally I have fared worse. The names changed and it's now coeducational which I think is excellent. My Rhodesian copy of an English Public school experimented with girls in my day and today it's also coeducational.
The worst thing I always found was bullying from which of course there is no respite when boarding. I did solve it for myself and got one idiot expelled.
I liked the look and culture, openness and friendliness of the boys at Betteshanger when we visited while trying to choose my prep school - but my parents preferred another so I wound up elsewhere. It worked out fine. I recall our lot used to play your lot at cricket & rugby once a year - never heard anything bad about the place. You find bullies everywhere, but at least in boarding school you can usually deal with them one way or another - most boarding schools dislike bullies spoiling their reputations.
Interesting. My husband went to co-Ed Bristish boarding school in Zambia in the 60s-early 70s, formerly Northern Rhodesia.
Ex boarding school pupil here... Sweden. I feel like I got away from a very difficult home situation. Would it have been better to stay? Not sure! I was 12, I guess it's more harmful at a younger age. But it changed my personality for life.
Where are all the comments..... (Too many prefects around or what)?
Thats not the only Thing, they struggel with
@@kirstinetermansen8360 I know, I was one.
No they get deleted by RUclips as it's not politically correct. All mine were on other Boarding School Channels !
Putting a child in a boarding school is abuse. This practice should be stopped. If the parents are unable to look after their children they should be put up for adoption for new parents to care and nurture them in a loving home.
you're 100% right. total abandonment into an abusive orphanage prison!
I attended a state run and mostly funded co educational boarding school from 1981 to 1986 and mostly loved the experience as did, so it seems the majority of my peers. Comments like yours are unnecessary and would no doubt be very hurtful to many loving parents. My elder brother did not want to attend the local comprehensive so my parents sought other options for him, it was his choice. I followed 3 years later having listened to his many tales of the general day to day of a boarding school and apart from the initial homesickness of the first year absolutely adored my time there, time I would not swap for anything. Am I affected? Possibly, although I generally consider myself to be fairly normal, do I feel abandoned? Not at all. Some people weren't suited to the life and quickly left, if others were made to remain then I guess they need to look to their parents.
I actually enjoyed Boarding School on the edge of The New Forest Hampshire in some ways but the bullying and sexual assaults spoiled everything. It was no different to the Film "Scum" except your Parents paid the School for your Boarding Fees and it was survival of the fittest. Some Boarders ended up in same-sex Marriages(and before you shoot me down in flames I have nothing against Gay Men or Women) but I am talking about boys who would otherwise would have been straight, we were forbidden to even talk to girls outside of school and there was no such thing as "free time" ! Sundays included Church and Prep ,Sport being the only escape from this routine. The School even seem "shocked" that nobody wanted to have any contact with the Boarding School when we started our illustrious careers Officer Training in The Armed Services or Merchant Marine as we were often "badgered" to give "pep" talks to pupils especially the Sixth Form. Thankfully these days Boarding Schools are much more regulated and zero tolerance on bullying and sexual assaults by Staff !
That's not how being gay works.
Both my parents went to Boarding School
Both Alcoholics & idiots. Both very weak emotional people
Boarding schools being described like orphanages, I loved my school, it did not scar me. It makes you learn to accept and live with others, you learn to share and integrate. It creates independence, critical thinking and develops character. I consider myself as privileged and I am grateful to my parents for an amazing experience that has shaped my life. This interview is left wing biased and does not focus strongly enough on the strong friendships made for life, the academic achievements and the tools that are provided for the future outside of school. I always felt safe, and was not under pressure to grow up too quickly. Boarding school is not prison, it is a life changing experience mostly for the better.
Most of the unhappy children I experienced at school had family issues at home so would have been even more unstable had they not been in a boarding environment.
Your reply about developing independence and character are an insult to those who go to day schools and develop these qualities. You only have to look at the kind of people who govern our country - Johnson, Cameron, Osborne, Rees-Mogg etc - to see that boarding schools merely encourage lying, philandering, blustering, snobbery, entitlement and avoidance of paying taxes. Then of course there's Nigel Farrago (Dulwich College) whose fascist views at school saw him leading his fellows in the school cadet corps through a quiet village at night singing Hitler youth songs. Close them down.
@@davidredshaw448 Get off the channel you silly little man. This is for adults, not winging lefties with an inferiority complex. Talking to your type is pointless.
@@richardraynor7197 It's quite obvious that boarding school (Ackworth, West Yorkshire) has made you a lovely rounded human being. Well said David Redshaw.
@@richardraynor7197 wow. Just wow. What age did you board from?
All these things were supposed to be learnt at home though... Not in a boarding school. If an institutional setting does more good than a home setting, the problem is the home setting not the greatness of the institution.
What utter tosh. I went to boarding school aged 8, remained until I completed my A levels, made many lifelong friends, and used to look forward to my return to school each term. I had friends at home too, who I saw during holidays, but boarding school was my rock. Yes, there were a few tough times, but there were difficult times at home too. I recognise some of Prof. Schaverien's characterisations as ones which are commonly held preconceptions by people who have not attended boarding school, born out of ignorance. Obviously boarding schools vary, some will be better or worse than others, but the characterisation that boarding shools are un-loving, un-caring environments little more than substitutes for prisons is utter rubbish. My teachers, housemaster etc, were on the whole wonderful and caring, my peers - fellow "inmates" - were similalrly in the huge majority helpful, caring, supportive - even loving. As a community we were all in the same boat, and we looked after each other, and looked out for each other, with genuine compassion and genuine understanding of each other's challenges - because we shared them in common.
Clearly boarding school cannot suit everyone, but for me at least, it was far better than attending a state day school where the bullies (yes, they do exist in state schools) were protected and supported, even encouraged, by their parents - in boarding schools the wannabe bullies tend to be sat upon by their peers! Abandonment? Never felt it. Homesickness - yep, for about three weeks. Confinement? Anyone who lets their 9 year old roam free is negligent, almost all children are confined by their parents but in a boarding school you are confined with your friends!
Fundamentally, yes, some people have issues with boarding school. Some have issues with state schools. Some probably have issues with home-schooling. If we live long enough we all find issues with some aspects of life, but this "syndrome" is nothing more or less than the product of the febrile imagination of a therapist looking for a problem to solve.
People like you are also tosh. How sad that you have to respond in this way. It is a travesty of separation. Unfortunately people like you are possibly unable to attach to others in a warm compassionate relationship. Sad for you to hear you be so dismissing towards professional practitioners.
@@helenyates3951 IYO.
I suddenly had a flashback, from forty years ago, that I was listening to my housemaster.
Steve Burrows. You must have had uncaring parents that you loved being away from them and preferred strangers to care for you, you poor soul.
@@daisybuttercup6801 Nope, they just worked and hence lived abroad in places with limited English language education provision. But thankyou for your concern.