ABSTRACT
In chapter 1, I suggested that Isabel Menzies Lyth’s study (1960) of social defences in a teaching hospital might provide a useful template for reflecting on life in other institutions. In this chapter, I aim to use such an approach to develop some sense of how in education the world ‘out there’ enters into everyday understanding and practice, and how the world ‘out there’ gets into every one of us (Frosh and Baraitser, 2008). While the focus is on education as an institution, through a consideration of the anxieties provoked by education, schooling and knowledge, the discussion will highlight some ways in which social discourses interact with the psychic life of individuals. The chapters that follow will take some of these or related issues and develop them in more detail.
