Individual Treatment Needs in the Therapeutic Environment of a Special School

A school which is specially set up* for emotionally and behaviourally disturbed children needs to combine a treatment perspective with educational aims. The philosophy of the school must include an understanding of emotional disturbance if it is to fulfil its main task, namely to educate a child socially and cognitively, and to prepare him or her for work and adult family life. There are however fundamental differences between the philosophy of education and the theory and practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Disparities between the two frameworks produce ambiguities that can result in contradictions in practice. These conflicts can hamper the staff group as a whole and may be played out in rivalries between representative disciplines: a chronic split may occur between psychiatric and teaching staff. As a child psychotherapist and former teacher in a special school, I shall here discuss some of the problems in reconciling the two viewpoints. The intention is to go some way nearer to meeting the clinical and educational challenge presented by the disturbed child.

All schools have numbers of children who make poor use of the educational opportunities; they fail to learn from the curriculum and the social experience seems to be inadequate for their needs. Although the blocks to learning would seem to have originated in the child's environment, the school endeavours with all its specialist resources to overcome the internal blocks to learning specific to the child. Some children receive particular attention because they make it impossible, not only for themselves, but for others to benefit from the education in the school. A succession of interventions will have been made: remedial groups, tutorial groups, support units, child guidance referral. Most often, it is through the child's violent and disruptive behaviour and the intolerance of frustration that the school and other agencies come to the conclusion that the child needs to be in