To be in with a chance to attend the VIP in-person book launch of Nick Duffell’s new book, and/or receive a free signed copy of the book, please email info@seenheard.org.uk expressing your interest
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The Un-Making of Them: Clinical Reflections on Boarding School Syndrome is having a book launch on Friday evening 16th May 2025 at a lovely venue in Highgate, N London, Lauderdale House in Waterlow Park at 7pm. https://www.lauderdalehouse.org.uk/plan-your-visit/waterlow-park
Places are limited, enter our competition via email above to be in with a chance to attend the event an/or receive a free signed copy of the book.
About the book
Ex-boarders can be among 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 of expanding the body of knowledge for therapeutic work with such clients.
The contributors reveal that the fall-out from boarding is much wider than previously thought and also report on innovative treatment methods that may help therapists address these consequences with ex-boarders in treatment.
Featuring the experience and insights of some 16 different clinicians, many of whom are ex-boarders themselves, this new collection offers contributions from a wide range of theoretical backgrounds, including psychodynamic, Jungian, transactional analysis and ‘energy psychology’. It tells how the understanding of the ‘boarding school syndrome’ has been enlarged by recent advances in attachment therapy, trauma studies, neuroscience, including pastoral, and safeguarding awareness within education. Topics covered include the effects of boarding on girls, on both intimate and sibling relationships, on military family boarders and on ex-boarder therapists, as well as how both careful, patient attention and dynamic EMDR may be used to alleviate 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 evidence-based 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.
The Un-Making of Them: Clinical Reflections on Boarding School Syndrome
Nick Duffell, Editor
Back Cover Blurb
A groundbreaking collection of 14 essays by 13 psychotherapists from different backgrounds featuring therapeutic work with adult ex-boarders, assembled by psycho-historian Nick Duffell, the pioneer theorist in the psychology of boarding. These clinicians show how boarding affects children differently, whether they attended elite or military schools or were sent from faraway continents to a country bewilderingly called ‘home’. Readers will discover how girls are affected growing up in Victorian institutions designed for boys and in the hothousing of coeducational schools; they will learn about the ‘survival imperative’ and how ex-boarder adults are impacted in their intimate lives. Chapters on the effect on siblings and school counsellors, on therapists who themselves boarded and work with ex-boarders and even on those who supervise ex-boarder therapists are more of the diverse topics included in this volume. Every practitioner should want this book on their shelf.
A selection of endorsements
From Earl Charles Spencer, historian and author of A Very private School
Nick Duffell has curated a series of interlocking works that, together, form a devastating indictment of the enormous harm that boarding schools have inflicted, for far too long, on far too many.
From Robert Verkaik, author of Posh Boys: How English Public Schools Ruin Britain:
A first-class anthology that digs deep into the psychological harm done by boarding schools. For the first time, there is a serious attempt to identify and understand the abuse suffered by girls who fall prey to older boys at co-educational boarding schools where staff are incapable of protecting them.
From Richard Beard, author of Sad Little Men:
A timely and useful summary of therapeutic approaches, with original contributions of particular interest and importance about women ex-boarders and co-educational boarding.
