Resistances to Learning: Psychoanalysis and Pedagogy (article)

Editor’s Note: The author has kindly granted permission for us to print the following excerpts from her paper presented at the Meeting of Political Scientists from COPLAC Institutions, at the College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, November 17-18, 1995.

I have been teaching political science for over 20 years and I have found that I have had to alter my style and approach in the classroom because of changes in the student population and because of changes in my own life work. Students have changed quite dramatically over the years, in addition to variations in skills and background one can observe some significant changes in interest and perspective. My colleagues and I have spent many hours in recent

Page 34

years pondering the phenomena of student disinterest and even hostility to the subject of politics. Observing in the student population currents that are evident in the culture at large: a distrust of government, and indifference to civic matters, a disinclination to even “tune in” a little bit to the larger political environment and a comfort with a certain level of social withdrawal.

The change in student audience has forced me to change my tactics in the classroom. As a trained psychoanalyst, I have found myself relying more and more on concepts and techniques I have learned as an analyst; in particular, the psychoanalytic notion of resistance has been useful in helping me develop ways to “reach” and motivate students today. In this paper I will define the concept and explain its genesis and describe ways it has been useful in developing strategies for the classroom.

The concept of resistance appears early on in Freud’s writings (see his “Paper on Technique,” [1912], ) but its meaning changes over time. Initially Freud conceived resistance as a defense against instinct and he equated it with the repression of anxiety; later he envisioned it in broader terms to refer to the various ways the mind tricks itself into “not knowing”: regression, undoing, isolation, displacement. Anna Freud further elaborates upon her father’s theory in the seminal text The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense (1966) where she expands upon the list of the ways the mind tricks itself: projection, denial, intellectualization, isolation, etc. As psychoanalysis has developed, since Freud, the term resistance has come to mean simply the ways in which the patient is prevented from free associating in therapy (Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis [1945], p. 27). Resistances are both conscious and unconscious, depending upon the origin of the internal conflict that the mind is avoiding, for example, whether it involves the ego or superego. In therapy, the analyst must address the resistances first in order for the treatment to progress and this may entail something as obvious as looking at lateness to sessions to things less obvious, like “going blank” when certain issues arise. The contemporary view in psychoanalysis is that resistances are not “weaknesses” but rather, they reflect various modes of adaptation to survival and, as such they reflect “older” ways of doing things (see, for example, Thompson, Psychoanalysis: Evolution and Development [1950], chapter 12).

In terms of pedagogy, the concept of resistance is useful if we conceive it in terms of resistances to learning, keeping in mind that we are addressing issues that students may not be aware of or are only remotely aware of and which have to be addressed in order for them to progress in class. In this context, resistances are defined as whatever prevents or inhibits the student from attending class, doing the reading for class, participating in class and taking exams and writing papers. Now, we can distinguish between less serious or more obvious resistances and more serious or deeper resistances to learning, the former referring to issues like lateness, not reading, not participating in class and the latter, referring to issues that inhibit comprehension of the course material, “mental blocks” to incorporating the material, whatever inhibits “interest” in the material. Given these two dimensions to resistances, I will refer to the more surface issues as initial resistances and to the deeper issues as defensive resistances to learning in order to describe the various techniques I’ve developed over time to address these roadblocks to learning.

Many of the initial resistances to learning involve “older ways of doing things”, that is, students bring expectations to my class that they have developed subconsciously as well as consciously from previous classes and from their educational “histories”. I use the syllabus to carefully lay out my expectations for students and I reinforce those expectations in class. Through trial and error I have found that a short syllabus, which clearly describes my expectations regarding attendance, class participation and the readings works best; I also include the dates for exams and papers and “class debates” and I try to get all this on one page. I use the syllabus as a guide and I consistently refer to it in class, noting when we are on schedule or behind or whatever. I also take attendance and I will refer to coming events like exams, weeks in advance. Students know that I take attendance at the beginning of class

Page 35

and when they come in late they see me after class so that I can record their presence (as well as lateness). All this takes about two minutes of class time but it works; I find that students will consult me over the course of the semester regarding the number of their absences and they ask for extra assignments if it is clear that they will have to miss more than four classes. The short syllabus works well because they read it and keep it; I have found that longer documents tend not to be read or are not used as a reference to what is going on in class that week.

When I first started teaching I devoted a lot of energy to writing lectures and developing a style as a lecturer. I, as a student, had had some wonderful experiences with the lecture format and my love of the subject matter of politics made me comfortable with this format. While I still love to lecture, over the years I have seriously altered this format. I have found that a combination of lecture and “structured” discussion works well, and that I have to pay close attention to the reading material. I have discovered through experience that students will not read the material if you do not discuss it in class and that if you lecture all the time, they will rely on their class notes to get by and that they will not read the material. I design my exams to carefully cover the readings and it is impossible to pass them without reading the material. The exams are a combination of identifications and essays, specifically addressing the themes of the texts. The “structured” discussions involve a tactic of mine that is designed to address both initial and defensive resistances to learning. In order to insure that even “shy” students participate, I break up the class into small groups of six or eight and they work as a group throughout the semester on various topics, either current events issues or more theoretical issues (in the advanced courses). This creates an environment where students have to talk to each other about the material and it addresses the initial resistances of not participating and remaining quiet in class.

In terms of the defensive resistances, the small group process format helps to draw students out of their isolation, their isolation from one another and from the material. I have found from experience that, like the therapeutic process, if you can get students to talk and reveal themselves to each other, they learn more about the material because they are forced to verbalize about what they have read (in therapy, the focus is on getting the patient to verbalize what is going on in their head). Students are graded individually but they have to work as a group and the assignments/presentations count as extra credit; there is no risk for the student in terms of their grade. I handle these assignments this way so that anxiety regarding performance (a resistance) is not an issue. In the classroom I try to get to know each student as an individual but I am limited by how much they are willing to participate. I will address the resistances of the individual as they come up in class discussions. For example, a very good student in my Introduction to Political Science course had a hard time understanding some of the analytic arguments regarding political institutions until I realized that she was seeing the “analyses” as criticism. When I pointed out to her in a class exchange between us that one can be analytical that is critical without being rejecting she was able to see the arguments. This is a student who cares deeply about politics so that at times, being analytical, creates anxiety, anxiety about being “too critical.”

Defensive resistances to learning are often revealed in the written assignments and they can be addressed by my written comments. Common resistances are projection, projecting one’s own views onto the author; denial, leaving out large chunks of an argument or not knowing the information; depersonalization, where the student presents the material in the author’s voice or in the instructor’s voice; identification, the student presents the instructor’s view as their view (which is always painful to the instructor, particularly when they misquote you); reaction formation, where the student presents the opposite point of view of the author. I encourage students to come see me to discuss my written comments and sometimes they do.

Finally, the most significant defensive resistance I have encountered in recent years is the lack of emotion or energy in students, repression. The bulk of my students work so that they often can complain of tiredness, etc. which may be true but I see the problem as deeper. Students present themselves “without affect”, that is, without any feeling/thought regarding politics and my struggle has been to keep the classroom “lively”. I have a number of tricks in this regard, from using films and jokes to stopping in the middle of a class and asking them “where are you?”. I do not always get an answer or a response but I keep trying.

In conclusion, I have found the concept of resistance to learning helpful in my teaching and I have briefly described the connection between the notion of resistance and the tactics used in the classroom to address resistances.

Page 36