COMING HOME
		A workshop for ex-boarding school pupils 9-10 December 2006, 10 am - 4.30 pm
				(extracted from www.nottinghilltherapy.co.uk)
	Boarding school survivors are characterized by many positive qualities.  Often there is an individuality and a creativity, an ability to tough things out, and a capacity to endure privations with good humour.  But there are costs too.  The humour sometimes covers profound emotional and spiritual wounds.  In order to survive our schooling we may have sought to amputate an important part of ourselves, a part that isn’t necessarily a ‘winner’ or successful, but loving and vulnerable.  Our partners may be aware of a certain subtle absence, a lack of trust or intimacy that has become second nature to us.   It is as if we were taught only too well how to be private, self-reliant, coping individuals.  Boarding school made us a master of disguises.  When it comes to adult, intimate relationships, we need to recover spontaneity, self-expression, a willingness to risk all and be hurt  -  or be loved.  Our caution and calculation are then a huge obstacle. This is problematic for us to talk about because boarding school was sold to us as something that made us special and uniquely loved.  We had the good fortune, we were given to understand, to have parents able and willing to make great sacrifices so that we would have a head start in life.  Is it suprising then that we find it such a challenge to speak about the actual joylessness of much of school life, the emotional withdrawal, the sense of being trapped, the torment of isolation, secretiveness and shame that was in reality a large part of our daily existence?  We were sent away to an institution that could feed us, educate us, teach us sports and social skills and how to be a confident manipulator, but one that could never give us a parent’s love.  We adapted, of course, to this abrupt, bewildering alteration in our young lives.  We learned the rules, kept ourselves busy and, from sheer necessity, we hid our longing for our home and family.  Pretty soon we cut ourselves off from our loving feelings, because to miss as much as we did would be too painful to bear.   How did we survive and become sexual adults, in a cold, rule-bound place from which everything soft or tender was removed?  How did we compensate and how do we live this out today? If you want to discuss participating in the workshop and/or to reserve a place, please call 020 7243 6752 or email marcusgottlieb@gmail.com.  The fee will be £160, of which £60 is due in advance.  The venue is The Coach House, 14a St Luke’s Road, Notting Hill, London W11 1DP.  The fee includes lunch on Sunday. Marcus Gottlieb is a graduate of an eight year, United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy-accredited training in humanistic and existential psychotherapy at Spectrum.  This institute was founded in 1976, the year that Marcus left boarding school.  Having spent some years in the legal profession in conformity with the expectations of school and  family, he is now fully committed to challenging the myths that surround the ‘privilege’ of boarding school and, in particular, the boarding school ethos of shaming and contempt for vulnerability and gentleness.