In the past five years I have worked in groups with about
40 fellow boarding school survivors and corresponded, spoken
and shared experiences with dozens of others. More recently,
I have worked as a psychotherapist with around 20, most of whom
have been gay, lesbian or bisexual. It was in September 2004 that
I started to run workshops, the subject of this article. These were
designed specifically for gay men, like myself, who felt that their
boarding school experience was difficult to come to terms with and
had had a long-term negative impact.
At that point it was exactly ten years since I had entered therapy.
When I started that journey, I was unaware that my anxiety, isolation
and sense of failure were linked to my schooling. Since then, I have
oscillated between anger about the damage done to me and insistence that
I have little genuinely to complain about. Struggling with this duality
is common. Boarders can buy into the myth that we were special and
fortunate. It is a tenacious introject.
The major selling point of boarding schools is that they
instil 'character', self-confidence and self-reliance. I
think this claim deserves to be questioned.
I find it less painful, less
shameful, to 'defend my parents' and maintain the story that I was happy,
than to admit that my daily reality at school was tedium and torment. If
I do voice my real feelings, I may do so apologetically.
The major selling point of boarding schools is that they instil 'character',
self-confidence and self-reliance. I think this claim deserves to be questioned.
It may be true that boarders can grow into competitive and domineering adults,
and these are qualities well rewarded in our society. However, the cost in
many cases is surely too great, in terms of the trauma of early abandonment and
institutionalisation, the symptoms of which are clearly seen in adults who are
hardened, pressured, and do not permit themselves normal weakness or failure,
who are resistant to loving and being loved.
Nurturing parents know that their children are dependent on their protection
and love. They set boundaries to contain and support them becoming gradually
less dependent, by individuating, making choices and developing their adult
form. Crucially, this is an organic process, which needs a pace appropriate
to the individual.
Boarding can be damaging because it takes parents and family
out of the picture and substitutes premature independence,
combined with dependency on the school, an overweening,
ersatz authority.
Boarding can be damaging because it takes parents and
family out of the picture and substitutes premature independence, combined
with dependency on the school, an overweening,
ersatz authority. An institution
is not designed to meet a child’s emotional needs, and they may conclude that
these are unimportant or a mere nuisance.
It is important that therapists are aware of the scars that ex-boarders
may carry, very often hidden. "Now that I realize," one client said to
me, "that my problems of low self esteem, depression, fear of intimacy
and difficulty with relationships are classic by-products of the boarding
experience,
I feel much of my previous therapy was wide of the mark."
The surface the client presents can be polished and urbane. When I meet
other ex-boarders, I tend to connect through humour and can appear
confident and tough; to show that I survived. I was conditioned from
childhood not to ask for emotional support, nor to share unhappiness.
To talk about my needs or vulnerability at boarding school would have
been unthinkably 'sissy' or 'soft'- especially taboo given my awareness
at some level of being gay.
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