In this paper the author finds that an important factor preventing learning and development in learning disabled people is the way in which their learning disability can act as a refuge from knowledge. He begins by discussing how the very term ‘Learning Disability’, through obscuring the distinction between organic and psychological difficulties in learning, can itself become a refuge for those who use the term from facing the reality of damage and deficiency. Following this, he considers the development of psychological impairments to learning from a psychoanalytical perspective. He places particular emphasis on how the emotional consequences of a child's handicap, to the child him/herself and his/her parents, can affect the development of curiosity and learning. The author illustrates these ideas with clinical material from individual psychoanalytic psychotherapy with an adolescent boy with a learning disability.