Learning Beyond Reason: Psychodynamic Case Studies in Education

Learning Beyond Reason: Psychodynamic Case Studies in Education includes contributions from Zahra Ahmed, Christopher Arnold, Dale Bartle, Gemma Ellis, Katie Ellis, Xavier Eloquin, Hannah Fleming, and Aaron Reynolds. Three of the five case studies are based around individual students or young people and the remaining two involve groups of adults involved in working with young people. The first chapter offers an overview of the approaches when applied to individual case work. The second focuses on emotionally based school non-attendance (EBSNA) and the third on working with a young person with multiple social challenges. Chapter 4 takes a psychodynamically informed view of a difficult whole school situation, which includes an analysis of complex relationships in a specialist school. Chapter 5 describes a technique for use with groups of adults working with young people and the insights that arise out of the application of these methods.

Each chapter focuses on the unique contributions of psychodynamically informed theories and techniques. The aim: to highlight the efficacy and humanity of psychoanalytic approaches in difficult situations involving young people. It is also hoped that this volume permits space for the reader to reflect on any emotional responses to the situations described in the case studies.

This companion book to the editors’ previous publication, Learning from the Unconscious: Psychoanalytic Approaches in Educational Psychology, highlights and publicises the practical applications of such approaches. It can be read as a standalone text or a follow-on that puts theory into practice. It is essential reading for educational psychologists, teachers, educational administrators, trainers of educational psychologists, parents of children with additional needs, and charity workers involved with the lives of children with additional needs.

Dr Christopher Arnold worked as a local authority educational psychologist in the West Midlands for nearly 30 years. He now works independently and until recently was a research tutor at the Tavistock Portman NHS Trust in their programme for training educational psychologists. In addition to his qualifications from Cambridge, Nottingham and Exeter he wrote a PhD thesis on the applications of Chaos Theory in children’s development. He is a past chair of the Division of Educational and Child Psychology in the British Psychological Society. He is currently developing tools to aid communication with children and young people. He has contributed to conferences both in the UK and Europe as well as publishing a range of books and papers.

Dr Dale Bartle is co-director of the Doctorate in Educational Psychology Programme at Cardiff University and a tutor at the Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation Trust, where he gained a doctorate in child and educational psychology. Currently, Dr Bartle has a varied teaching portfolio, which includes contributing to undergraduate, masters and doctoral programmes, focusing primarily on groups, organisations and research methodology. He is particularly interested in psychoanalytic approaches to applied psychology and social research. He is actively engaged in knowledge generation, collaborating with a number of training courses across the United Kingdom, contributing to conferences, journal publications and various research communities. 

Dr Xavier Eloquin is an educational psychologist, coaching psychologist and Human Givens therapist. He is an associate fellow of the British Psychological Society. Dr Eloquin has written a number of articles and chapters exploring the interface between educational psychology and psychoanalytic ideas. He co-edited the previous volume entitled Learning from the Unconscious and contributed an account of his family’s experience of lockdown in the Covid-19 pandemic.