In this paper, I offer a Winnicottian perspective on Freud’s (1925, 1937) infamous indictment of teaching as an “impossible profession.” Specifically, I argue that what makes teaching impossible today is the inability to allow for a group regressive experience rooted in Winnicott’s (1954a,b) “regression to dependence.” It is from this experience that a transitional space can emerge, apperception can blend with perception, and the self can come alive. And yet, if learning is created and found in this space, so too is madness, and it is this latter danger that forecloses on teaching with a degree of risk. Instead, teachers and learners would rather carry on with what Winnicott (1949) calls the “split-off intellect” because, in part, this is what we are socialized into, but also because the risk concomitant to regression is perceived as too great. In brief, because there is no opportunity to regress, there is no space to aggress and be bad-enough teachers and learners. The teacher cannot become a usable object, and the learner cannot learn beyond a schizoid oscillation between withdraw and compliance.

Curiously, Winnicott despised teaching (he would fall asleep in front of his students). Borrowing from Ogden (2019), one might wager that Winnicott intuited the necessity of shifting away from a form of epistemological teaching to one of ontological teaching; one that prioritizes feeling alive rather than feeling equipped with knowledge. How, then, to withstand the desire to teach and embrace a sense of going-on-being that is itself a paradoxical form of teaching? What is at stake? And what might we learn from Winnicott the radical pedagogue?

This paper addresses the conference theme by offering a psychoanalytic (particularly Winnicottian) contribution to the psychosocial understanding of teaching and learning, experiential learning, and the fear of breakdown (trauma) manifest in educational settings.

In order for a classroom to become an effective safe space, it helps to regard it as an object. As such, all that exists within a classroom space, what goes into creating that intersubjective area of experience, falls under the auspices of ‘object,’ including, students, instructor, architecture, material furniture, audio-visual equipment etc. This paper contextualizes the trigger warning as one part of how a classroom is used as an object, arguing that the trigger warning takes on many different functions in maintaining the way in which a safe classroom is used as an object by instructor and student alike.

Using D.W. Winnicott’s paper ‘The Use of an Object and Relating through Identifications’ (1969/1999), I consider the term ‘use’ through his specific psychoanalytic frame, emphasizing one’s capacity to think, that is ‘the making of interpretations, and not about interpretations as such’ (Winnicott 1999: 86). How one develops and establishes a capacity to use objects, and significantly where that capacity is thwarted or absent, is the project. As such, by positioning the classroom as an object of use, I examine the purpose and role of trigger warnings as mechanisms for creating ‘safe spaces.’ The aim is to highlight that trigger warnings can only ever succeed as markers of whether or not the classroom has succeeded in establishing an authentic safe space.

This psychoanalytic examination of ‘use’, then, is very much attendant to the student’s point of view, because it is how the student uses, or rather develops a capacity to use, the classroom (or indeed the instructor) that determines the construction and viability of a safe space. Trigger warnings, as a particle of this use, function as indicators of how successful (or not) a safe space has been established collaboratively.

My doctoral inquiry considered how the nature of a learner teacher relationship is involved in the limitation and demonstration of complex thought. Working within an overarching psychoanalytic framework and socio-cultural paradigm provided by Alfred Lorenzer’s (1986) In-depth Hermeneutic method(ology), answers were sought by considering the nature of the intersubjective relationship that supported, or failed to support, the demonstration of complex thought for these learners.

My conclusion includes that when the learner operates within a schema of traumatically skewed intersubjectivity (Schechter, 2017) and attempts to connect and communicate with a teacher who does not operate similarly, there results misunderstanding, miscommunication, and a relational field of being-at-odds-with-another (adapted from Stern, 1985/2000). Emerging as part of these intersubjective relational attempts, my expression of an affective-relational dynamic (the Shame-Agency dynamic) articulates a process from doubt toward shame that acts as a limiter for demonstrating complex thought and a struggle to learn from experience. Clear recognition of these affective states, along with certain relational qualities in the teacher contribute toward supporting developing self-agency, complex thought, learning and its demonstration, connecting a feedback loop to the learner of their ability to learn in relationship with a teacher.

With the centrality of the learner teacher relationship in relational pedagogy, this offers a different paradigm through which to consider how early developmental trauma impacts relationships, educational achievement, and underachievement. My research outcome offers the teacher a means for developing a learning culture beneficial to children who experience(d) being looked after by those other than their parents, as well as all others in the class, contributing to a psychosocial approach to teaching and learning.

Keywords: learner teacher relationship; developmental trauma; complex thought; intersubjectivity; affective-relational dynamics; the Shame-Agency dynamic.

Social isolation and loneliness are “epidemic” in the twenty-first century, directly affecting physical, mental, and societal health (Office of the Surgeon General, 2023). Social isolation increases the risk for premature death by 29%, doubles the risk for depression, and is justifiably the strongest predictor of suicides. The Covid-19 pandemic resulted in alarming rates of loneliness.

Neoliberalism valorizes “extreme individualism” and “denies connections of all kinds” (Layton, 2006, p. 83), thus contributing to social isolation’s epidemic proportions. By promoting competition and creating feelings of disconnection, it both feeds loneliness and isolation and also undermines people’s sense of solidarity (Becker, Hartwich, and Haslam, 2021).

Increasing social isolation and disconnection in turn drive fraying societal bonds. In recent years the size of social networks has shrunk—and alienation and distrust have increased. Splitting and projection lead to polarization and tribalism. When people are lonely, they become more insecure, anxious, and fearful. To relieve their feelings of exclusion and gain a sense of belonging, they may turn to populist and extremist groups.

A culture of connection is necessary if we are to repair societal bonds and ameliorate social isolation. Psychoanalysts—and, in particular, community psychoanalysts—can teach mentalization, i.e., the understanding that the other person has a subjectivity similar to one’s own; mentalization can be taught in schools, churches, and community centers. At the societal level, social conditions—enabled by laws or norms which allow the creation of “containing social environments”—can help people to mentalize (Rustin, 2001, p. 6; as cited in Weintrobe, 2021, p. 83). Weintrobe calls these social environments “frameworks of care.” They allow individuals to tolerate and recognize “each other’s states of mind,” or subjectivities. When we can see and appreciate the other, splitting and projection decrease, lessening distrust and polarization on one hand and loneliness and isolation on the other.