The Un-Making of Them : Clinical Reflections on Boarding School Syndrome

Ex-boarders can be amongst the most challenging clients for therapists with many clinicians struggling to address their unique needs. This book presents a groundbreaking collection of chapters sharing insights and reflections on clinical work with ex-boarders in different settings and circumstances with the aim establishing a body of knowledge for clinical work with these clients.

This book aims to demonstrate how the fall-out from boarding is much wider than was previously thought whilst reporting on new and innovative treatment methods that may serve to help clinicians address those consequences with boarders. Focusing on the experience and insights of clinicians, many of whom are ex-boarders themselves, the book features contributions from a wide range of theoretical backgrounds, including psychodynamic, ‘energy psychology’, post-Jungian, and more. It studies how the understanding of the “Boarding School Syndrome” has been enlarged by recent advances in Attachment therapy, trauma studies, neuroscience and pastoral/ safeguarding awareness within education, and brings the current research into new territories for this issue. Topics covered include the effect of boarding school on sibling relationships, miliary family boarders, ex-boarder therapists, and using EMDR for boarding school trauma. The reader will gain a wider understanding about how individuals and society are impacted by this way of raising children and what evidenced pathways to recovery are being evolved.

This book is written in an accessible jargon-free style and will appeal to psychotherapists, psychologists, psychoanalysts, and counsellors, as well as ex-boarders and parents interested in the impact of boarding schools from a professional or personal perspective.