Boarding School Syndrome

Dear Editor

Joy Schaverien's 2011 paper ‘Boarding School Syndrome’ has engendered a long overdue debate but seems to surprise her reviewer, Elizabeth Standish. I am not surprised any more. Although I pioneered psychotherapy with ex-boarders in the late 1980s and my book, The Making of Them, was published in 2000, I realize that the psychological implications of boarding are still unknown to most practitioners, so I would like to share some points.

The problem is not simply that children are traumatized at boarding school - although many are. It is the very habit of sending children away as a socially normalized tradition and privilege that causes wide-ranging trauma for individuals and our class-riven society. Coming from families able to part with their children for social advantage, foregoing attachments in the latency period, facing puberty without parenting and then being expected to emerge a self-reliant winner is not actually a privilege, despite opening doors to the highest office. Myriad double-binds force a dissociative false self I call the Strategic Survival Personality. ‘Strategic’ because survivors typically do anything to escape trouble, to avoid identifying with the vulnerability that had to be eschewed along with other associated feelings. Generally, ex-boarders only present for therapy when in crisis and tend to bolt as soon as the problem subsides. Having had the worst training for intimacy they often render partners depressed.

Denying the problem is routine, except in the case of a Rebel Type, obsessively against the system as a whole and easier to detect. Still, intervening effectively with any ex-boarder is not easy, requiring awareness of what was survived, why the strategic survival personality is so successful and how it is still operating. The therapist must focus on present events, supporting the client to recognize how they are still surviving and projecting the incompetent, vulnerable one out; if not, change is highly unlikely. This is why I