The split‐off narrator: coming to symptoms in stories of learning to teach

Abstract

In this conceptual paper I draw on narratives from several contexts in my own educational history – a student‐teaching experience, a graduate course in educational theory, and my work as a preservice teacher educator – to consider, first, the Winnicottian notion of the split‐off intellect, in which individual subjectivity is skewed toward thinking and away from affect, and second, an inversion of that notion, in which affect splits off to form the central domain of experience, relationship, and defense against difficulty. Theorizing some of the ways in which thinking and affect can at times seem to get in each other’s way, and reflecting on what individuals might use that ‘getting in the way’ to do, I explore some ways in which educators in general, and teacher educators in particular, might facilitate the working‐through of intellect/affect splits with the aim of helping students integrate thinking and feeling as they begin or continue their work in the classroom.

Keywords:

• teacher education
• Winnicott
• split‐off‐intellect
• psychoanalytic theory
• mourning

Notes

1. Elsewhere, however (Granger, 2004), I have indeed made some of those associations.

2. The Droste effect, describing a recursive visual image, is named after a Dutch brand of cocoa, whose tins picture a woman carrying a tray on which is a tin of the same cocoa, with the same picture of a woman carrying a tray on which is … and so on, in theory infinitely (and in practice so far as the resolution of the picture permits).

3. Pseudonyms are used throughout.

4. And perhaps assigning the chapter is the way I enact my own hate. Or perhaps I do it by keeping the class for the full three hours, ‘forgetting’ to give them a break partway through. Or perhaps I do it merely by insisting that we talk about the possibility of hate in teaching. (My thanks to Deborah Britzman for this insight.)

5. One of my (admittedly cynical) pet ‘theories’ is that there are two chief reasons why we become teachers. The first, as noted, is those inspiring early experiences. The second? Revenge. But that is another paper.

6. The Faculty of Education at York University in Toronto, Canada, typifies this predilection (York University Faculty of Education, 2009).