7. Helen Tyson.pdf (191.33 kB)
‘Little Mussolini’ and the ‘parasite poets’ Psychoanalytic pedagogy, modernism, and the illegible child
In 1927, Dora and Bertrand Russell, inspired by other educational pioneers including Homer Lane, A. S. Neill, Maria Montessori, and Rachel McMillan, had opened Beacon Hill School on the South Downs in Sussex. Responding to Russell’s article, one correspondent wrote in to denounce the practice of group composition as a form of ‘séance’, in which one ‘little Mussolini’ must be dictating to ‘several little parasite poets, whose acquisitive faculties are being unhealthily exercised by the process of communal authorship’. Bertrand Russell’s 1931 account of the school was, nonetheless, a passionate articulation of the educational ideals underpinning the school—and it provoked a vehement debate. In Russell’s romantic portrait of free childhood, he makes a crucial set of links between the child’s freedom from external taboos, the child’s unique access to an ‘exact and expressive’ form of language, and the idea of the school as a miniature democracy.
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Publication status
- Published
File Version
- Accepted version
Publisher
RoutledgePage range
184-215Pages
252.0Book title
Wild analysis: from the couch to cultural and political lifePlace of publication
Abingdon, OxonISBN
9781032061153Series
New library of psychoanalysis 'Beyond the couch' seriesDepartment affiliated with
- English Publications
Full text available
- Yes
Peer reviewed?
- Yes
Editors
Elizabeth Sarah Coles, Helen Tyson, Shaul Bar-HaimLegacy Posted Date
2021-12-13First Open Access (FOA) Date
2023-04-14First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date
2022-01-04Usage metrics
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