Discussion

Dr. Boigon has described people who fear penetrating or being penetrated by the new, who experience an utter inability to comprehend as though

their capacity for intellectual activity were paralyzed. She said, “In each of these persons the stuff that wouldn't stick was actually so fraught with the tensions of anxiety and hostility that this body-state precluded openness, relaxation and meaningful assimilation.” The merest awareness that they were trying to understand precipitated such anxiety that words became meaningless sounds. She delineates a series of premises by which her patients live. These are (1) that others learn without effort; (2) that they, being innately incapable of learning, are not responsible for their defect, and (3) that they, being asked to do the impossible, are justified in feeling abused. She describes the fantasy which eases their anguish, serves to alienate them from their actual abilities, and perpetuates their difficulties, as one of effortless omniscience and omnipotence.

Problems in learning are but one of their difficulties. Such blocking is the external manifestation of internal dynamic forces, intrapsychic, interpersonal and developmental in nature. Dr. Boigon has spoken of some of these, namely alienation¹, inertia¹ and the idealized image¹ as they affect the process of learning.

I shall speak of the development of capacities for learning as an aspect of the individual's growth toward autonomy (real self)² and as an aspect of his expression of autonomy.

There is a nightmare common to many people, in which it is imperative that the dreamer perform a task that he cannot do because he never knew how, or because he did not learn it well, or because he has forgotten how through disuse. The dreamer feels that among the clusters of attributes that pertain to his identity is an ability to do the particular task. He feels that the ways in which others relate to him are woven around their anticipation of him as one who can do. Therefore his co