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This book gives a comprehensive analysis of the psychological influence of the British boarding school system. It is a review of the extensive sociological and psychological impact of a tradition embedded in British society. I first read this book soon after it was published. However, I was moved to re-read and review it after reading a number of articles, published in this Journal, on the emotional impact on young children of going to boarding schools (Partridge, 2007; Power, 2007; Stack, 2008). It seemed that the pioneering work of Nick Duffell merited a place in these discussions.
The Making of Them was a first in the field. In it, Duffell begins by engagingly confiding his own experience; like many psychotherapy careers, his began when physical symptoms led him to inquire into his own psychological state. He entered psychotherapy but, although he had been profoundly affected by having been sent to boarding school at an early age, this was not picked up by his therapist, and so it was not addressed. It was only later, as he explored his own experience and began to talk to others about it, that he realized the significance of being separated from home, in his case, at the tender age of eight. He became aware that many others shared his negative experience of boarding school.
Duffell trained as a psychotherapist and, in 1990, along with two colleagues, he began to conduct workshops for those he called ‘Boarding School Survivors’. One of these colleagues had benefited from his schooling and did not share the sense of pain about the experience, and so gave balance to the enterprise. These first workshops attracted a great deal of interest, and media attention followed. He found that people were either relieved that the silence had been broken on speaking of the negative aspects of boarding, or they were affronted by the