Emotional Experience of Learning and Teaching

Elsie Osborne was formerly a chartered child psychologist and Head of Disclipline in the Child and Family Department of the Tavistock Clinic. Isca Salzberger-Wittenberg is a Consultant Psychoanalytic Child and Adult Psychotherapist who worked at the Tavistock Clinic for twenty-five years and was its Vice-Chairman for ten years. She was a Senior Tutor in the clinical training of child psychotherapists and a teacher of Infant Observation. She has lectured and run seminars in Austria, Germany, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the USA and run workshops in Australia and South Africa. She held temporary professorships at Turin and Klagenfurt University and is a life-long honorary senior staff member of the Tavistock. She now works mainly in private practice, doing brief and long-term psychotherapy, supervisions, is still teaching at the Tavistock and abroad. She has published articles in professional journals, contributed chapters to a number of psychoanalytic books and written two books: 'Psychoanalytic Insight and Relationships' and 'The Emotional Experience of Learning and Teaching'- the latter including chapters from Gianna Williams and Elsie Osborne. Both books have been translated into nine languages. Gianna Williams trained as a child and adult therapist and was part of the teaching staff of the Tavistock Clinic in the 1970s and later Consultant Psychotherapist at the Adolescent Department of the Tavistock, where in 1987 she founded the Eating Disorders Workshop. She has taught at the Tavistock Clinic and University of East London, and the Universities of Pisa and Bologna and has founded numerous courses based on the Tavistock model in Italy, France and Latin America.

'The re-printing of The Emotional Experience of Learning and Teaching is a most welcome event. The book's insight and wisdom are quite as relevant now as when it first came out in 1983 - perhaps even more so, in that the standards, values and attitudes towards children's development which are represented in this volume are becoming harder for teachers to maintain rather than easier. this book goes to the heart of the teaching/learning relationship. It constitutes a bench-mark of insight and good practice and provides a model for that which it advocates. After sixteen years, there is still nothing comparable in the field. It is to be hoped that this fine new edition will make such valuable ideas more widely accessible in areas that belong in the educational setting but also extend far beyond it.'- Margot Waddell, from her Foreword

• Foreword -- Introduction -- Beginnings -- Hopeful and fearful expectations -- Learning to understand the nature of relationships -- Aspects of the student’s relationship to the teacher -- Aspects of the teacher’s relationship to the student -- Emotional aspects of learning -- Understanding the individual child in the classroom -- Idealised relationships -- Denigratory relationships -- Helpful relationships -- Work with families and professional colleagues -- The teacher’s relationship with the pupils’ families -- The teacher’s relationship with other professional workers -- Endings -- Different kinds of endings