Learning in a border country: Using psychodynamic ideas in teaching and research

This paper arises out of recognition of the importance of psychodynamic theory in our approaches to teaching and research. We demonstrate how psychodynamic ideas - broadly defined as encouraging people to engage more closely with thoughts and feelings that may be hidden from the conscious mind - can be applied in many, diverse, and radical ways. But also how such an approach can be problematical both for students and teachers. We take issue with those writers who want to separate therapy from education, insisting as they do that 'therapeutic education' involves a 'diminished' notion of the subject who sees him- or herself as a victim of circumstances. Instead, we suggest, entering the border country between therapeutic and educational processes and ideas can be deeply rewarding as well as empowering for teachers, researchers and learners alike

The role of avoidance coping in the disclosure of trauma

Little research has been undertaken to examine the empirical basis of commonly applied methods of posttrauma intervention. We propose that Pennebaker's work on structured disclosure of trauma provides a suitable analogue to explore questions of interest. The present study asks whether avoidance coping is likely to interfere with abbreviated disclosure of traumatic experiences. Subjects were 118 college students randomly allocated to either a one-session or four-session written trauma-disclosure condition. At 2 months postdisclosure, subjects with high avoidance coping within the one-session condition exhibited significantly more trauma-specific and physical symptoms than all other subjects. Avoidance coping significantly predicted trauma-specific symptoms at 2 months. These findings suggest that single session traumatic disclosure may not be useful for individuals with an avoidance style of coping