Boarding School Syndrome

Dear Editor

I had mixed reactions on reading the letters by Nick Duffell and Simon Partridge (BJP 28(1): 126-31). One was delight at having provoked two such lively responses, followed quickly by feeling misunderstood. Perhaps I need to clarify that I have no doubts about the detrimental effect of early parental deprivation whether through the death of a parent, being brought up in the ‘Care’ system, being sent away to boarding school or however it occurs. And I do recognize that there is a particular problem for those in the latter category in that they are often told they are privileged, and thought to be so. But both writers seem to assume that I am likely to be impressed by ‘well-spoken schoolboys’ or that I do not recognize the ‘emotional illiteracy’ of many upper-class British families.

My intent in writing my original letter was to try to understand the problems in relation to ‘boarding school syndrome’ experienced by a number of patients in therapy. In so doing a number of ideas have been attributed to me which I do not recognize, and I have stirred up some angry responses. It is clear that Partridge and many others also felt misunderstood by their therapists/analysts, and feel angry with them.

I don't deny that professional incompetence exists, or that psychoanalytic thinking has to move on. But might there be something else that is being misunderstood? Partridge refers to the ‘distanced couch’. I am not sure whether the ‘deficit’ he refers to is that which he experienced in his analysis or the much earlier deficit in his childhood or both. But if it is the latter, this seems to me to touch on the rather large topic of what can and cannot happen in therapy or analysis. As Duffell says, it is important that therapists do not ‘ignore how the past impacts the present’ and that we address the difficulties patients experience in current relationships both within and outside the consulting room. What we cannot do is put right that early deficit, a concept which may