This book provides a unique and highly topical application of psychoanalytic theory to the broad context of education, including schools, universities, and adult learning. Education is understood as a crucial element in a lifelong project to gain more coherent and meaningful understanding of self and others. Psychoanalysis has taken the contingency, construction, and development of human subjectivity, as well as the difficulty of thinking, to be its prime preoccupation. Yet - at a time of increasing doubt and anxiety about the purposes and practice of education - psychoanalytic understanding, from various traditions, has never been more marginal in educational debate. The book seeks, in these terms, to bridge some of this gap: it is written for teachers, trainers, policy-makers, clinicians, researchers, and diverse academics who want to look beyond bland superficialities to deeper struggles for self and understanding. This includes unconscious processes in the relationships that constitue education as well as resistance to new ideas and practices.

About The Editors And Contributors , Editors' Notes And Acknowledgements , Introduction:minding a gap , To think or not to think: a phenomenological and psychoanalytic perspective on experience, thinking, and creativity , Anxiety, psychoanalysis, and reinvigorating education , A psychoanalytically orientated clinical approach in education science , Zohar's late arrival: a clinical analysis of teaching practice , Margot's red shoes: when psychic reality challenges teaching , IWhite cliffs, white horses: on playing and auto/biography , Teacher's countertransference reconsidered , Prequels and sequels: a psychoanalytic understanding of developing a professional practice in an education setting , Border country: using psychodynamic ideas in teaching and research , Training teachers: psychoanalytical issues in the teacher-student relationship , Learning through the emotions: experience-based learning for psychologists , Continua: Mentally Ill Artist Students Uninterrupted , Transformative Learning: A Passage Through The Liminal Zone , The Dynamics Of Student Identity: The Threats From Neo-liberal Models And The Bene¿ts Of A Relational Pedagogy , Bridging Gaps