ABSTRACT
Remembering is a key stepping stone on the path to recovery. Ex-boarder clients can unpack their personal childhood history and restore an image of themselves at school. Working with such an ex-boarder in individual therapy, therapists must recognise just what an amputation has been suffered. The therapeutic job involves guiding the client to accept that what happened was in the past and that a different strategy is needed to move from survival to living as an adult. Starting to recognise issues connected to boarding and remembering what it was really like may eventually lead to acceptance: coming to terms with the trauma of the broken attachments, acknowledging that adopting a survival strategy was necessary for the child to survive. Sometimes therapists are distracted by strange thoughts and feelings that arise in the field between them and their clients; sometimes by their own desire to reach out across the divide.
