Trauma Abandonment and Privilege
Thurstine Basset (thurstine@bassetconsultancy.co.uk)
28th November 2014: SRF Conference
Introduction
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Boarding School Survivors workshop
Boarding Concern Involvement
Links with SRF
Boarding school – abuse or privilege or both?
Privilege makes it hard to raise the issue
Parents make the decision – young children
mostly have no say
The book – in progress
• Trauma, Abandonment and Privilege: a guide to
therapeutic work with boarding school survivors
• Authors: Thurstine Basset (survivor) and Nick
Duffell (survivor and therapist)
• Practice-based text book, illustrated by case
studies, diagrams, cartoons and exercises.
The book – published by Routledge
in 2015
• Describe the effect on adults of being sent away to
board in childhood
• Locate this within the context of the British
attitude to boarding
• Offer interventions and strategies for therapists,
counsellors, psychologists and other mental health
workers to work with ex-boarder clients.
My experience
When I was pushed through the doors for the first time,
my sense of bewilderment and loss was almost
overpowering. The first and most natural thing I wanted
to do was to cry, but I soon discovered that this was
frowned upon and discouraged. I learned to bite my lip
and joined centuries of British-educated and privileged
children who develop a ‘stiff upper lip’. (Basset 2006)
My experience (cont)
My mother cried all the way home as she held my
teddy bear that she was advised not to leave with me.
Some weeks later on their first visit, my mum and
dad found me in a cheerful mood. I had made a
friend and my mum recalls that I almost completely
ignored her, as I was so intent on playing with my
friend. I ran straight past her.
In truth, of course, we both suffered.
(Basset 2006)
My experience (cont)
I have said I wasn’t prepared for going away at 8,
but equally the same could be said for leaving school
at 18. The feeling of finally leaving after all those
years was as high in an almost ecstatic way as the
original feeling had been low in a deeply miserable
way. Both experiences, ten years apart, had an otherworldliness about them. (Basset 2006)
Emotional Courage
Emotional courage seems to me to be a means for
the expression of emotional intelligence. Half a
century is a long time to wait to acquire enough
emotional courage to get in touch with some of your
innermost feelings – still better late than never as
they say. (Basset 2006)
Childhood curtailed
My headmaster’s report:
‘My one complaint concerns foolish behaviour –
nothing serious, merely pestilent – and much of
his tiresomeness concerns Matron's department.
In a third term he must put away these childish
ways’. (1956 – I was aged 8)
Good and bad experiences
More people are currently seeking psychological
help for issues connected with early boarding.
Many people feel the experience did them no
harm and that it was a very good one.
Not all are damaged by the experience but each
child has to survive and that has a cost.
Abuse?
‘Britain’s most overt form of child abuse is
mysteriously ignored.’ (George Monbiot in the
Guardian, 26th March 1998)
Tribe of people, mostly in deepest Britain, still
adhering to a mid-Victorian doctrine of drastic
change to family attachments which are deliberately
broken
Numbers involved
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67,000 currently in boarding schools (2014)
14,000 aged 7-13 (2011)
Drop in 1990s – but currently increasing
Annual fees £29,000 (2014)
Telegraph (2011) – credit crunch/longer working
hours – BS cheaper than a nanny
• Poll - How do you juggle work and looking after
your children?
Telegraph Poll (2011)
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Childminder
Nanny (paid)
Grandparents
Boarding School
Stay at home Mum/Dad
After-school clubs
Telegraph Poll (2011)
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Stay at home Mum/Dad – 35%
Boarding School – 23%
After-school clubs – 14%
Nanny (paid) – 13%
Grandparents – 8%
Childminder – 7%
Theories of child development that
support boarding school at an
early age
Theories of child development that
support a gradual transition from
child to adult
All theories – developmental, maturational,
behavioural, educational, psychological,
psychodynamic, attachment theory..........
1990 to 2014
• Boarding School Survivor Workshops – 1990
• The Making of Them – book published by Nick
Duffell – 2000
• Boarding School Syndrome – Joy Schaverien –
2011
• Wounded Leaders and abuse enquiries – 2014 and
beyond
Other writings
• Marcus Gottlieb (2005) – ‘profoundly
homophobic environments’
• Rovianne Matovu (2010) – ‘a double
homesickness: a deep longing for my country,
home and family; and especially my
mother...................
• Jane Palmer (2006) – finds healing through
therapy
General literature
• Anthony Worrall-Thompson, Peter Cook, John
Peel, Frederic Raphael
• Angela Lambert and Drusilla Modjeska
‘The gain is a discipline of mind that should not be
undervalued. The loss, it seemed to us that
afternoon, was represented by the figures of sirens
and sphinxes that filled Freud’s room: the
repressed feminine that our culture denies. Our unEnglish, feminine waywardness.’ (Modjeska 1995
page 235)
Media
• Films: The Making Of Them (BBC 1994) Leaving
Home at 8 (Channel 4 – 2010)
• Supertramp ‘Logical Song’ (Hodgson and Davies
1979) – young man with a magical life is sent to
board so his school can:
‘Teach me how to be sensible,
Logical, responsible, practical.
And they showed me a world where I could be so
dependable, clinical, intellectual, cynical.’
Brick (Depresso -2010)
Brick (cont)
What therapists can do
• Help client journey from survival to living
• Use RAC (Recognition-Acceptance-Change)
model
• Understand and work with survival personalities –
rebel, conformist, crushed.
• Draw on wide range of theory
Survival Personalities
Theory that underpins the work
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Attachment
Trauma
Survival
Other sources of knowledge
Boarding school an attachmentdeficit environment
Being sent away to boarding school at a young age
effectively breaks the strong attachments that have
nurtured a child.
Children find themselves in an institutional world,
usually run on masculine and patriarchal lines, with
little feminine or maternal influence.
Boarding school an attachmentdeficit environment (cont)
This is an entirely unnatural rupture: no
psychological or developmental theory of any kind
supports such practice.
Instead of growing through a process of gradual
maturation over a number of years children are
forced to grow up too quickly, to put away childish
ways and become adults before their time.
Boarding school an attachmentdeficit environment (cont)
Instead of having a secure base of good attachments,
boarding children tend to grow up emotionally and
relationally detached.
Children compensate by developing an internal
refuge: the Strategic Survival Personality, to which
they transfer their attachment and reliance.
Boarding school an attachmentdeficit environment (cont)
In consequence, ex-boarder adults often seem to
show signs of a child inside of them who has never
organically grown up and who tends to dominate
some of their behaviours, especially in intimate
relationships.
Conclusion
The last word – a mother
The last word – a child
Thank you for listening