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This review article comes about seven years after the publication of Schaverien's book Boarding School Syndrome (2015). It is a timely summary of the original findings - which clearly show how deep, long-term psychological harm is caused to many overprivileged children. They are sent away from home for initiation into the self-aggrandizing myths and other curious rituals of the English upper class. Schaverien summarizes the damage with an easyto-remember ABC - D: abandonment, bereavement, captivity and, for some, dissociation. I'd like to add E; where E stands for (pathological) entitlement,
and failure of empathy. Using this checklist, several very senior UK cabinet ministers appear to be unfortunate examples of this emotionally disabling condition.
As one of my analytic patients often said, ‘My school was a Borstal for rich kids whose parents paid a fortune to have their children professionally abused and neglected’. If abused and neglected, then through identification with the persecutors, ‘One’ learns to be abusive and neglectful - as well as to self-refer as ‘One’ - rather than I or me. ‘One’ is a gender-neutral impersonal pronoun, meaning ‘a person’. When ‘one's’ parents treat one impersonally, then one does the same to oneself.
The ill-effects of boarding impact on children's ability to form close affectional bonds. These normally develop from a fundamental trust in parents as good-enough objects. This is repeatedly ruptured. If you board from seven to eighteen, with six separations a year (at the start of each term, and the end of each half term), this makes sixty-six in all; enough to produce habituation. And, though, for some, school is better than living in a broken, troubled or continually relocating home - ‘diplomats child syndrome’ and ‘military kid syndrome’ are common subsets - the lack of parental role models contributes to trans-generational transmission. You send your children to boarding school too. Toxicity is added as discussing this painful