Education - an 'Impossible Profession'? ─ Psychoanalytic Explorations of Learning and Classrooms

In classrooms and lectures we learn not only about academic topics but also about ourselves, our peers and how people and ideas interact. Education – An Impossible Profession extends the ways in which we might think about these processes by offering a refreshing reconsideration of key educational experiences including those of:



being judged and assessed, both formally and informally
adapting to different groups for different purposes
struggling to think under pressure
learning to recognise and adapt to the expectations of others.


This book brings psychoanalysis to new audiences, graphically illustrating its importance to understandings of teaching, learning and classrooms. Drawing on the author’s original research, it considers the classroom context, including policy demands and professional pressures, and the complexity of peer and pedagogic relationships and interactions asking how these might be being experienced and what implications such experiences might have for learners and teachers.

The discussions will be of interest not only to teachers, leading-learners and teacher-educators, but also to individuals interested in education policy, professional practice and theories of education.

Tamara Bibby is a lecturer in Learning and Teaching at the Institute of Education, University of London, UK.

1. Introduction 2. The Primary Task of the School? 3. Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: The Lacanian Mirror in the Classroom 4. Accountability: Winnicott in the Playless Classroom 5. Tall Poppies and Shrinking Violets: Freud, Foulkes and the Nature of Groups 6. Group Processes: Bion and the Desire Not to Know 7. When Does the Lesson Start? Thoughts, Thinking, Learning and Knowing 8. But I Think Best with My Friends: Thinking in Relationships 9. Being ‘Good Enough’: Resisting Idealisations and Taking the Risk to ‘Fail Better’