Freud for teachers, amended

It’s been very hot in Northern Colorado, and air-conditioning was, of course, scheduled to be repaired exactly at the same time. Not in March, not in October, when the weather is mild, but in the dead of the summer, in July. I could have done most of the work at home, but solidarity with our classified staff prevented me from going home. Here we are, sitting in our hot offices, trying to concentrate on work. We could not rent or buy window AC units, because we have no windows, and according to the laws of physics, to cool something, you must first heat something. The laws of thermodynamics apply to human relationships: we take in before we can disperse. Our good emotions and bad emotions need to go somewhere, and other people are most readily available conduits (although there are others like art, religion, etc.).

I have spent a few hours grading my students’ educational autobiographies, the first set of papers from this graduate class. It is actually a pleasure to read these: most of our students are very good writers, they are intelligent, and experienced. I feel good about our graduate programs. Of course, most are still lacking the powers of analysis and conceptualization, but hey, this is what graduate school is for, and I am certain we will make significant progress by the end of the semester. What strikes me though is how vivid, how sometimes painful the memory of early schooling are for most people. Those successful, and those deeply wounded, the A student and the special education students – all have a story to tell; all remember particular events rather well. All seem to link their present selves with those distant school children from many years ago.

Freud was right that the experiences of childhood determine who we are as adults. He was wrong, however, to concentrate on the early, pre-linguistic stages of human development. IN Freud’s view, it is precisely because we cannot directly access many of early memories, they become untamed, unprocessed, and perhaps more traumatic. This is all true, but early schooling can be as significant, and as traumatic, because we allow ourselves to remember only certain parts of it, and in the context f a specific discourse. For example, most people believe that since they are successful now, and since success can be attributed to learning (and schooling in particular), then whatever pain and humiliation they have experienced was ultimately good for them. It’s the same reasoning as in “My dad used to beat me up, and now I am OK, therefore beating children is OK.” Now, people do not make such conclusions because their power of reasoning is weak; rather, there is an active suppression of memory that is going on. Childhood is supposed to be a happy, care-free time; kids are not supposed to understand what is good for them; it was all worth it; schooling is child’s happiness, while manual labor is a curse – these are the boundaries of our predominant ideology of childhood. We do not dare to question those assumptions; thinking otherwise is unacceptable. (A well-informed reader may notice influence of Valentin Vološinov’s take on Freud here).

Raising your own children is an unending, continuous dialogue with your own parents. Similarly, teaching is always a dialogue with your own teachers. Teaching is impossible without some grasp of one’s own educational path, without making peace with your teachers, your parents, and your own earlier self. What is it that I have done? What was done to me? Why am I the way I am now? In psychiatry, the focus is, understandably on understanding one’s fears, frustrations, and other things that make us suffer. However, teachers must also understand the sources of their own compassion, empathy, and desire to do and be good. Otherwise, this desire to help can be tragically misplaced, when doing good takes precedence over those for whom the good is intended. Teachers must know not only the dark corners f their souls (which everyone has), but also the brightly lit corners. In what I am doing, how much is what have been done to me?