Salvaging the self in adult learning

Abstract

This paper stems from a dialogue on the subjects of learning and learners: one forged out of experiences in research and teaching, and the application of psychodynamic insights, developmental psychology and recent work in the neurosciences, to thinking about adult learning and subjectivity. We argue that some notion of the self needs to be salvaged, in a poststructuralist and postmodern world, when considering processes of learning, teaching and, fundamentally, what it means to be human. We recognise that this is a complex topic and that we can only touch on limited aspects of it here, but our paper represents an attempt to bring new trans-disciplinary understanding of selfhood into conversations about adult learning. The paper builds on our other recent writing, which explored the border country between psychotherapy and educational processes, and between different epistemological perspectives, including the place of unconscious processes in understanding learners and learning (Hunt and West, 2006).