Thinking in the face of disturbance

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper offers an alternative perspective on Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND), paying attention to the emotional life of children with SEND. Despite ground-breaking work by seminal psychotherapists from the 1980s to the current day, disparities remain in the Early Years Workforce regarding professionals’ acceptance of the emotional capacity of children with SEND compared to children with typical development. This paper explores the impact of mental pain and disturbance on the developing infant’s capacity to learn and considers the effect of the child’s difficulty and disturbance on the collective mind of the professional group. The paper presents psychoanalytic observational vignettes that document the author’s work with a boy and his parents before, during and after he was taken into Local Authority foster care. The paper recognises his arrested development as an expression of his inner world which had developed in response to internalisation of his problematic external circumstances. It suggests that his complex internal world could be and was affected by a sensitive, observational approach to work with him, valuing the Portage worker’s curiosity. This proved helpful in fostering a sense of emotional connection and allowing some of his defences against pain and fear to lessen, enabling development.