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From International Socialism, No.23, Winter 1965/66, p.32.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Maladjusted Boys
Otto Shaw
Allen & Unwin, 28s.
Otto Shaw’s Red Hill School is a pioneer independent boarding school for maladjusted boys, but cannot unfortunately be a blueprint for local authorities. He lists the criteria which limit admission to Red Hill: IQ not below 130; not deeply schizoid; not psychopathic or psychotic; no epileptic features; no history of physical nervous damage. It is thus a statement of the obvious when he says, ‘This confines a certain area from which cases are drawn.’ Local authority schools for maladjusted boys (and girls, for whom provision is woefully inadequate) cannot be so choosy.
This does not detract from the value and importance of Shaw’s humanitarian work. He writes sound sense about maladjustment, its cause, effect and treatment; he is backed by his thirty years’ experience at Red Hill. For him, maladjustment is basically an impairment of the ability to form satisfactory relationships; moreover, with only a few exceptions, maladjusted children have had their limit of toleration to aggravation and irritation overtaxed. It follows that the capacity to form satisfactory relationships must be repaired; this is what Red Hill – like all schools for the emotionally disturbed – tries to do. Social re-education, rather than psychotherapy, within the school environment is Red Hill’s underlying philosophy; although analytic and psychothera-peutic techniques are naturally not eschewed, practical difficulties arise over their application within the school environment. In the interests of a free-flowing transference and a progressive analytic situation, Shaw believes, the analyst or therapist must remain detached from the school community; a point of view which, though controversial, is probably upheld by a majority of those of us who have practical experience of work in a boarding school for the maladjusted.
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