The inward turn in therapeutic education – an individual enterprise promoted in the name of the common good

Abstract

This paper focusses on the relatively new international phenomenon of therapeutic education. Taking on the fact that this phenomenon is part of the schools’ assigned in relation to the formation of young people, the aim of this paper is twofold: to highlight what rationales emerge in the formation of young people’s emotions in school, and to discuss these rationales in terms of vital principles of public education for the common good in society. The results are based on a case study of 10 Swedish teachers involved in the so-called Life Competence Education, which serves as a contextualisation of this phenomenon. Two rationales of this formation stand out as key; the seriousness of the inward turn of the individual, and the crucial step of sharing one’s innermost. Although these rationales involve collective notions of the students’ emotional well-being, they are quite firmly anchored, we argue, in the single individual’s well-being.

Keywords:

• Therapeutic education
• teachers
• emotional formation
• private public
• inward turn
• common good