The Teacher as Container of Anxiety: Psychoanalysis and the Role of Teacher

Abstract

This article focuses on anxiety in teaching and learning. It argues that in essence the teacher's role is to contain anxiety for the sake of learning. The teacher's skill in setting up and maintaining a "containing space" is the keystone on which the various aspects of the art of good teaching rest. Within this space, learning can be experienced as the expansion of potential, not merely the mastery of content and predefined competencies. Despite the differences in aims, a strong "family resemblance" exists between teaching and psychoanalysis in terms of setting, role, transference, and underlying notions of human development.