1John Dewey rarely wrote about psychiatry or psychoanalysis across his collected works. This has led some readers to believe that Dewey’s philosophical vision isn’t sufficiently realistic or that it takes an overly rosy view of human nature (Niebuhr 2015; Hofstadter 1962). Some of Dewey’s most ardent champions, individuals who claim the mantle of progressive or student-centered educator, lend credence to this line of thinking, especially when they make strong claims about the human potential for self-directed learning (Holt 1983). In the most extreme cases, excessively student-centered educators seem to act in ignorance of the ways that humans can be deceived about their interests and how we humans engage in self-sabotaging behaviors. Failing to appreciate the psychological complexity of children and the human propensity for self-deception and self-sabotage, these self-styled progressive or student-centered educators believe that by leaving children alone, their potential will be unlocked. This un-schooling or de-schooling urge gets a lot right about the ways that formal schooling can thwart and distort a child’s passion and a child’s interests, but it also ignores the ways that many school aged children are not in a position to learn to their fullest potential, especially if they’ve experienced trauma or if the parenting they experienced didn’t lead to a secure base of attachment (Winnicott 1986; Siegel 2013). If Dewey were the type of progressive or student-centered educator some of his followers claim him to be (Hook 1959a, 1959b, 1971), then it would give reason to criticize his philosophy of education as unrealistic and naïve given the fact that extreme versions of progressive education act in ways that go against what psychiatry and psychoanalysis teach about humans. But Dewey is not this type of educator, as he makes abundantly clear across his educational writings. And while one may wonder why Dewey’s thinking inspired this extreme thinking, and while one may wish to advocate for strongly progressive or student-centered forms of education, this is not the purpose of the present paper. Rather, I wish to clarify Dewey’s philosophy of education by exploring Dewey’s thinking on psychiatry and psychoanalysis, beginning with a reminder that Dewey wants to avoid extremes in his educational thinking.
2As readers of Experience and Education know, Dewey wants to put distance between his philosophy of education and progressive educators. From the first line of Experience and Education, Dewey asserts, “Mankind likes to think in terms of extreme opposites” (LW.13: 5) and goes on to show that his philosophy of education is not extreme: neither overly progressive nor overly traditional. And one reason why Dewey cannot endorse claims made in his name by progressive educators is because Dewey was influenced by the findings of the modern psychiatry of his time. While this is not a historical paper, one can imagine the influence of psychiatry came from several directions. His work at the Chicago Laboratory School and his work with other experimental schools would’ve exposed him to problem situations that would’ve led him to the literatures in the human sciences, including psychiatry and psychoanalysis (Tanner 1997). The growing commitment to child study by educators like Lucy Sprague Mitchell – who influenced and was influenced by Dewey – also added much needed complexity to understanding children, their unique problems and potential (Antler 1989; Frank 2012). And while much work can be done, historically, to trace Dewey’s influences, what I aim to do in this paper is more modest, looking at those moments in his collected works where he mentions psychiatry directly.
3Even though this approach is modest, I hope it proves illuminating, particularly to anyone who feels that Dewey fails to appreciate the complicated – tragic, self-deceiving, self-sabotaging – dimensions of the human psyche and human experience (Hominh 2021). As Dewey notes in Sources of a Science of Education, “The increasing number of insane and neurotics is itself evidence of great failure and evil in our educational processes, parental and scholastic. Even more significant is the discovery in psychiatry itself of the number of morbid displacements, injurious to both happiness and social usefulness, found in persons called normal” (LW.5: 35). Far from suggesting that children entering schools could positively direct their own education, Dewey believes that even “persons called normal” have already developed defenses that stand in the way of the very possibility of acting in their best interest. For this reason, not only shouldn’t a child be left to determine the direction that their education will take, but it will also take an extremely thoughtful educator to create a learning environment that will facilitate the un-learning of harmful defenses and coping mechanisms so that educative growth becomes possible. As Dewey’s extended discussion of mis-educative experiences in chapter two of Experience and Education makes very clear, experiences can be educative or mis-educative. By the time a child enters school, they may have already had many mis-educative experiences that will render future growth difficult, even with the assistance of a thoughtful educator working in a supportive school. This task is too much for a child to undertake alone or with minimal guidance. And the picture Dewey paints here is not optimistic at all. Even as Dewey rejects theories of human nature premised on humanity’s sinful or fallen nature (Rockefeller 1994), this doesn’t mean all is well with an individual’s psyche, even “in persons called normal.” Human progress isn’t inevitable, and it takes tremendous adult effort and intelligence to create a learning environment that effectively cultivates the talents of young people (Stengel 2001).
4In this paper, I will look closely at two places where Dewey discusses psychiatry, arguing two points. First, even though careful readers of Experience and Education appreciate that Dewey isn’t advocating an extreme version of progressive education and that he is critical of progressive educators who claim to be following his philosophy of education, I also think even the most careful reader can fail to appreciate just how far Dewey’s criticism of progressive education goes. Second, a reader can fail to appreciate the depth of Dewey’s criticism of progressive education precisely because Dewey almost always emphasized the positive dimensions of growth without highlighting how children come to school with histories of mis-educative experiences that will make educative growth in school challenging. A teacher who expects too much from schooling, unaided by other helping professions, may become disappointed in their abilities and as can sadly happen, become overly frustrated with their students. By focusing on the rare moments where Dewey highlights the work of modern psychiatry, this paper helps teachers and others concerned about student well-being appreciate that even the best teaching won’t reach all students. Rather, teaching must be informed by advances in psychiatry and psychoanalysis, or at the very least, teachers and school leaders should acknowledge the limitations of even the most effective teaching in the face of what some students bring with them to school. While we must work to improve teaching, improving teaching is never going to be enough for some students who require extensive social, economic, and psychological intervention (Darling-Hammond & Cook-Harvey 2018).
5In the end, I hope this paper demonstrates that Dewey’s philosophy of education benefits from conversations with psychoanalytic work, maybe especially psychoanalytic work that takes a decidedly critical view of a human’s capacity for Dewey’s ideal of growth (Hildreth 2011). At the same time, I hope that by showing Dewey’s philosophy of education depends on these difficult conversations, we will have reason to believe that we needn’t dismiss Dewey’s philosophy of education as naïve or overly optimistic. Again, if this paper is successful, then philosophers and practitioners will develop a deeper appreciation for Dewey’s philosophy of education and the importance of putting it in conversation with psychiatry and psychoanalytic discourses.
6Sources of a Science of Education (1929) is less well-known than Democracy and Education (1916) or Experience and Education (1938), but it is a useful reminder to readers of just how demanding it is to claim Dewey as an inspiration (Frank 2017). In Sources of a Science of Education, Dewey goes to great lengths to show that education must draw on advances in all fields of inquiry, especially the developing fields of psychology and psychiatry. He devotes an entire section of this book to psychiatry and its implications, and he makes what I take to be a startling point. Even followers of Dewey who appreciate the argument that Dewey isn’t a progressive or student-centered educator in any simple or straightforward sense often feel as if they are on safe ground when they assert that Dewey would champion giving students choice in the classroom. When a student is given choice in the classroom – choice of what they will read, choice of research topic, choice of children they would like to work with in small groups – they appear more motivated and engaged in their learning. As such, it stands to reason that choice is a good thing and something Dewey would advocate.
7But if we are interested in what Dewey actually thinks, then we will be given reason to doubt that offering students choice is always a good thing. I offer a lengthy quotation from Sources of a Science of Education that begins to support this point.
In many respects the findings of social psychology and psychiatry reinforce each other. The most harmful and undesirable emotional attitudes of children, so fundamental in development, especially fears, inferiorities, etc., have been shown to be due mainly to social conditioning. It has been practically demonstrated that no amount of repetition really fixes a habit apart from attendant emotional responses, and that these are influenced by association with others. Opportunities for constant success and positive achievement have been shown to be indispensable conditions for preventing the growth of inferiority complexes. (LW.5: 35)
8Dewey is doing several things at once in this passage. First, he demonstrates that young children develop fears, inferiorities, etc. based on their early upbringing. Moreover, it is nearly impossible to undo these habituated patterns of response. What can break patterns of bad repetition (Lear 1996) is facilitating connections to new habits with positive emotional responses. But if students are left to their own, they may simply continue patterns of negative repetition, continuing the development of mis-educative habits and responses to the world. Here we might think of two regularly observed behaviors in classrooms: learned helplessness and perfectionism. A parent who consistently steps in to resolve any difficulty a child faces causes the child to realize that they don’t need to face any difficulty. When presented with a difficult situation, they demonstrate helplessness and the parent steps in to help. When this child enters school, they will rely on this same strategy. They will pretend not to know how to use scissors, they will pretend not to understand directions, they will pretend that they don’t have the personal resources to manage interpersonal conflicts. If the educator follows the patterns established by the parent, then the child will be reinforced in the habits of learned helplessness.
9Similarly, if a parent gives a child the impression that their self-worth and lovableness are tied to their achievement, then the child can develop a fear of failure. If they fail in any way, then they will feel unloved and unlovable. This type of child will often go to great lengths to succeed at all costs or go to great lengths to hide or suppress any aspect of their work that would demonstrate the child’s need for further growth. The perfectionist sees the need for growth not as the positive that Dewey takes it to be – all of us stand in need of growth – but as a marker that the child is a failure. Recently, psychologist Carol Dweck (2006) has developed an entire research program on the negative aspects of developing what she calls a fixed mindset. A child who binds their identity to being smart and always being right, often sees growth as a marker of lacking intelligence, and so opportunities for growth are avoided. A young person entering school with a fixed mindset will often learn less than students who see intelligence as something one can expand through effort. If educators are not aware of a student’s self-concept (either one that is fixed or growth-oriented) then they may set a child up for failure. Allowing a fixed intelligence student choice will often lead to the student choosing the easiest work or the work that allows them to appear intelligent even if it isn’t causing them to grow.
10Although Dewey doesn’t cite his work directly, one gains insight into Dewey’s thinking about psychiatry by considering the work of Dewey’s contemporary Harry Stack Sullivan. Sullivan was a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who was heavily influenced by pragmatic approaches to the self (Green 1962; Bromberg 2014), and a key dimension of his project was to demonstrate the roles that anxiety played in preventing growth (Sullivan 1971). Sullivan believed that children internalize the beliefs of the adults in their life, and then they work hard to appear pleasing to the adults. If the adults in a child’s life value intelligence, then the child will work hard to become a self who is intelligent. But because the child is always caught feeling as if they must work for the affection of the adults in their life, they often experience great anxiety, especially if they are in a situation when they feel like they will let down the adults. The child internalizes the adult expectations and avoids experiences where they might fail to live up to those internalized expectations. Here is how the quote above from Sources of a Science of Education continues:
The unconscious character of the major part of human motivation reveals the unwisdom of determining the selection of the activities of children on the basis of what they say when asked what they want to do – indeed of being very sparing in asking the question. It also forces greater attention to the attitudes that control, unconsciously, the dealings of adults with the young. Most positively of all, it compels constant attention to what children actually do in order that there may be ability to understand the forces that actually move them in their behavior. (LW.5: 35)
11Two points are worth emphasizing. The first is the main point I am attempting to make in this section. Dewey cautions educators against giving students choice in the classroom because students will often make choices based on unconscious factors like defenses against growth and engagement. To return to Dweck’s thinking on the fixed mindset, a child may be interested in advanced mathematical problem-solving but also know that the risk of failing at that advanced work is much higher than if they choose to do work they aren’t interested in but is easier for them. When a teacher gives a child with a fixed mindset choice in work, it may be the case that the child will choose work that makes them appear intelligent, not work that is challenging and growth-promoting. As Dewey’s entire educational project is about promoting growth, we can see why Dewey would want to avoid this situation.
12We can think more deeply about Sullivan’s thinking on anxiety as well. Children can internalize which subject-matter or fields of study are acceptable to the adults in their life. Imagine a child whose parents believe in the importance of conservative values and imagine a child whose family flies a Black Lives Matter flag at home. When these children are given the opportunity to choose what they want to study, they may gravitate toward topics they think their parents would endorse and not necessarily subjects that they are most interested in. We might also think of children from families who see early childhood education or nursing as “women’s work,” or who see engineering and computer science as the most respectable life choices. When children from these types of backgrounds are given a choice in what to study, it may often be the case that they aren’t choosing from a place of genuine interest. They perform the type of selfhood they think will be found acceptable to the people who provide them with care. If teachers play along by claiming to offer these children choice based on authentic interest, then they won’t be promoting Deweyan growth, they will be allowing children to perform to internalized expectations, facilitating mis-educative experiences for these children.
13For Dewey, what matters is growth. An experience is educative only insofar as it (1) empowers the child to be successful in future learning experiences, and (2) motivates the child to want to keep on learning (Frank 2019). We can think about a teacher teaching poetry. A successful poetry lesson is one where (1) students become better able to read poetry in the future, and (2) students want to go on reading poetry in the future. An experience is mis-educative if it doesn’t empower a student to be successful with the subject in the future or if it makes the student develop an aversion to the subject. Returning to poetry again, a mis-educative experience is one where a child wouldn’t know how to read poetry more successfully given what they were taught, and/or they don’t develop an interest in reading more poetry again in the future. I bring this up because it leads me to the second point I want to make in reference to the quotation above.
14Dewey places a great deal of responsibility on the teacher’s shoulders. The teacher cannot leave something as important as learning and growth to student choice, especially when too many children are making choices from a place that Sullivan describes as anxiety. Students may avoid hard work to appear smart. They may avoid certain types of subjects because they worry how an interest in these subjects will be viewed by parents and other adults they look up to. They may hold themselves back from taking an interest in countless subjects simply because they don’t know how they will be judged if they become a person interested in that subject. It is for these reasons that Dewey believes an educator needs to be attuned to developments in psychiatry and psychoanalysis. A good teacher anticipates defenses. A good teacher realizes the ways that a genuinely educative experience involves risk because a genuinely educative experience invites a student to take an interest in something, not knowing exactly where this interest will take them. As Dewey highlights in Democracy and Education, the “word interest suggests, etymologically, what is between” (MW.9: 134). While the tone of this suggestion is very positive in Democracy and Education – it is an invitation to the excitement of one’s ever-expanding self – it is important to recall that this Emersonian and Whitmanesque adventure of the expanding self can also be profoundly anxiety-inducing for students. To be in-between an acceptable identity and an unknown identity can be terrifying. To take a modest example of this, one we philosophy professors may have unique insight into, students are often genuinely confused when they realize that they are far more passionate about the study of philosophy than they are about studying a field they know to be more lucrative and higher status. Though they feel an attraction to the types of growth philosophy can make possible, they also fear what would happen if they admitted this attraction to themselves and, for example, switched their computer science or finance degree for a degree in philosophy.
15I don’t mean to endorse a superficial either-or here. Rather, I want to suggest that the promise of genuine learning will often provoke anxiety and resistance, and Dewey’s philosophy of education demands that a teacher be mindful of this. To return to the quote from Sources of a Science of Education above, being aware of the resistances to learning students put up “forces greater attention to the attitudes that control, unconsciously, the dealings of adults with the young. Most positively of all, it compels constant attention to what children actually do in order that there may be ability to understand the forces that actually move them in their behavior” (LW.5: 35). This is a far cry from un- or de-schooling. Rather, good teachers are called to pay constant attention to how children are responding to, for example, work that is genuinely challenging and unsettling. If children are avoidant of challenging and unsettling work, even if they are otherwise high-achieving students who tell the teacher that they love a good challenge, then the teacher must take notice and find ways to help these students build positive emotional attachments to difficult work that challenges the student’s self-concept.
16What this means, in practice, is that teachers and schools will need to fundamentally rethink the rewards used to promote learning. Too often, in my experience, the clever student is rewarded. Students who don’t need to put in effort are praised as good students, while students who make more mistakes, even if they are building habits that will lead to long-term growth, are penalized. The “attitudes that control, unconsciously, the dealings of adults with the young” (LW.5: 35) are often profoundly anti-teaching. What I mean by this is that too often teachers appreciate students who don’t need to be taught. When I recall subjects that came easily to me and subjects where I struggled mightily, I remember getting a great deal of praise and attention when I didn’t need a teacher’s help, and getting the opposite attention from teachers when I needed their help. I don’t think this is uncommon. Unconsciously, teachers can point to the clever and the quick student as a signal that the teacher is effective. And once the teacher unconsciously establishes their effectiveness, then they are given a reason to negatively judge struggling students as “not putting in the right type of effort” to understand what is being taught. This can lead to the teacher getting in the habit of avoiding students who need teaching and praising self-learners as a way of establishing their excellence as a teacher.
17To close, Dewey’s philosophy of education would have us fundamentally rethink giving students choice in the classroom. While students may enjoy having choice, it may be the case that they appreciate choice because it allows them to avoid difficult work that would force them out of their comfort zone and into deeper learning (Mehta & Fine 2019). It is only a thoughtful educator who can observe the unconscious factors that operate in the classroom, factors preventing growth, and who is able to create an environment where growth is encouraged and rewarded. For example, a Deweyan educator may find ways to reward mistakes with higher grades, if the student is making mistakes on work that is pushing the student into situations conducive to growth. This teacher will make the attempt to connect positive emotions with difficult growth, so that the child will be more inclined to face difficult growth in the future. Again, if given the choice, too many students will remain in their comfort zone, protecting their self-image. This poses a major challenge for the educator, who will have to act critically and creatively so that children learn to risk growth. In the next section I will discuss this challenge in more depth, focusing on how the educator uses an understanding of psychiatry to promote growth.
18The main lesson of the previous section is that a teacher is essential in facilitating growth. When young people are given choice in the classroom, many will choose activities that lead to stasis and mis-educative outcomes. The teacher must be an observer, listening to how the young person describes themselves and observing how they act (Himley 2000; Furman & Traugh 2021). Through observation and listening, the teacher will learn when a student is defending against growth and what those defenses look like. The teacher will work diligently to undermine those defenses by rewarding the types of behaviors that would lead a student to take risks that lead to growth. Once the student begins to get in the habit of taking the risks that lead to growth, Dewey’s more positive vision of growth becomes operative. That is, a student who defends against growth won’t experience its transformative effects. But a student who gets in a habit of experiencing growth, even growth that initially feels uncomfortable, will want to continue growing. I don’t think this is an overly optimistic vision, but it is built on the realization that defenses against growth are real and need conscientious attention.
19There is a striking parallel with Dewey’s vision and the analytic process. Even if a person enters analysis wanting to get better, this doesn’t mean they are ready to do the difficult work of personal change (Phillips 2022a, 2022b). The therapist understands the ways defenses work to undermine the therapeutic process, and they work in acknowledgement of these difficulties. To be very clear, a teacher isn’t a therapist. But The Sources of a Science of Education is all about the ways that educators must learn from the human sciences, especially the fields of psychology. What the teacher learns from psychiatry and psychoanalysis is that we humans are very good at defending ourselves against change, even changes we know to be in our best interest or that we consciously desire. As well, being human is difficult work (Lear 2011). Even the best-intentioned parent or teacher will do things that confuse the child and that can lead to emotional troubles for the child as they get older. Here is how Dewey puts it in Experience and Education, the second extended quotation I will discuss in this essay:
The experience of young children centers about persons and the home. Disturbance of the normal order of relationships in the family is now known by psychiatrists to be a fertile source of later mental and emotional troubles – a fact which testifies to the reality of this kind of organization. One of the great advances in early school education, in the kindergarten and early grades, is that it preserves the social and human center of the organization of experience, instead of the older violent shift of the center of gravity. But one of the outstanding problems of education, as of music, is modulation. In the case of education, modulation means movement from a social and human center toward a more objective intellectual scheme of organization, always bearing in mind, however, that intellectual organization is not an end in itself but is the means by which social relations, distinctively human ties and bonds, may be understood and more intelligently ordered. (LW.13: 55-6)
20Dewey begins by noting that disturbances in the home can lead to later mental and emotional troubles. He then applauds newer forms of education for easing the transition from school to home. The school, in ceasing to be authoritarian, becomes a place that more closely approximates the home where “good enough” parenting is the norm (Winnicott 1986).
21While this is clearly an advancement, it introduces new problems into schooling, problems that Dewey seeks to address across Experience and Education. The problem Dewey addresses in this passage is the difficulty of respecting the child, meeting the child where they are, while not forgetting that the purpose of the school is to move individual children into “a more objective scheme of organization” that will issue forth in stronger social relations that are “more intelligently ordered.” Where traditional education runs the risk of crushing the individuality of the child, progressive education runs the risk of indulging the child, making the child self-centered and solipsistic: unfit for democratic social living. Here, again, it should be clear that Dewey is trying to find a middle course between traditional and progressive education. Psychiatry is especially important here. First, it reminds the educator that harsh discipline can issue forth in “later mental and emotional troubles.” Second, it reminds the educator that being overly permissive – simply going to the extreme opposite of harsh discipline – isn’t the answer. Rather, the educator seeks “modulation.” The educator doesn’t use harsh discipline or coercion to force the student to accept anything, but the educator doesn’t allow the student to live in a solipsistic, narcissistic, world. The educator invites the child to engage with other children and with the taught disciplines, forcing the child to realize and appreciate the full objective reality of other children and objects of inquiry (Paley 1992). Other children and their desires are just as real as the child’s desires, and objects of inquiry need to be attended to with thoughtfulness and care if they are to be understood as they are and not as the child wishes them to be.
22Here, again, we can see parallels with psychiatry, therapy, and psychoanalysis (Lomas 1993). In most forms of therapy, the therapist isn’t didactic or authoritarian. At the same time, the therapist must call the analysand into contact with reality. The art is asking the types of questions that facilitate therapeutic action that leads to growth (Lear 2003). What I see Dewey doing in this passage is reminding the teacher that their art is to take a group of individuals and help them forge a common world that is grounded in reality, not realms of private fantasy. Traditional and progressive education fail to accomplish this either by indulging the child’s fantasies and distortions or by suppressing these fantasies and distortions in ways that will only root them more firmly in the child’s psyche. As Dewey notes in Experience and Education, “[e]nforced quiet and acquiescence prevent pupils from disclosing their real natures” (LW.13: 39). It is not as if the child’s real nature is wholly destroyed by traditional teaching methods. More often than not, the child finds ways to disclose their natures in harmful ways. If their real natures are denied an appropriate outlet in school, the child can come to see school as an enemy or their self as unworthy. Neither lead to growth. At the same time, if the child is indulged in their every whim, then they never learn how to appreciate the full emotional lives of their peers, and this will stunt their own emotional and social development. The teacher has countless small and large ways to teach children that just as the child deserves respect, care, and attention, they should respect, care for, and attend to others. In this way, the teacher continuously turns children toward reality and away from fantasy.
23Dewey learns from psychiatry that the family and the school can become a “fertile source of later mental and emotional troubles” (LW.13: 55). The educator needs to be alert to this fact, neither too indulgent nor too authoritarian. To practice modulation that leads to growth, the educator learns from successful therapists and therapeutic practices. Educators learn to be especially aware of the ways that young people can give the appearance of learning and engagement when – in fact – that are resisting growth. Again, a teacher is not a therapist. But the teacher needs to be concerned with student growth. Part of being a good teacher, then, means being able to diagnose when a student is taking the risks of learning and when they are feigning interest and engagement. In the final section I develop this point, arguing that a key element of Dewey’s philosophy of education is engaging resistances in productive ways.
24I opened this paper suggesting that Dewey is criticized for being unrealistic and that student-centered and progressive educators often don’t do Dewey any favors when they suggest that formal structures of schooling are at best a necessary evil. Dewey, as I’ve argued in this paper, holds that growth is desirable and motivating, but it isn’t automatic or easy. In fact, children enter school with anxieties and defensive mechanisms that make growth feel threatening. If these children are left alone or given the choice to pursue learning experiences that are most attractive to them, they may head down mis-educative paths. It is for this reason that educators, like therapists, need to be alive to the whole child, aware that past experiences impact what is possible for the student in the present. A good teacher is alive to the challenges of meeting a child where they are, and creating an environment for learning that is structured so that children unlearn resistances to growth and take an interest in the risks and enjoyments of learning. As he wisely writes in Democracy and Education, “Frontal attacks are even more wasteful in learning than in war” (MW.9: 176). Even very young children have invented very careful defenses against appearing weak, or unintelligent, or anything but what they believe their caregivers want them to be. A teacher must be awake to these defenses and respectful of the anxieties the child will feel – that any of us feel – when we are challenged (Farber 2000). One way of being respectful of these anxious feelings is to find ways of rewarding risk, and to make the classroom playful.
25Play, in many ways, may be one of the most important things that a teacher can encourage, and encouraging play offers another way to see the connections between pragmatism and psychoanalysis. Pragmatic thinkers are often playful: setting old ways of thinking into motion (Poirier 1993). Noted psychoanalyst Adam Phillips (2022a, 2022b) sees this pragmatic playfulness as essential to successful therapy. The therapist helps get analysands back in motion, not necessarily by directly solving problems, but by reminding the analysand that they needn’t be controlled by visions of what a good life must look like, visions they’ve internalized and that are causing them harm. Rather than continue in harmful repetitions that don’t bring happiness, we can think otherwise and engage in experiments in living that get us unstuck. The good teacher can do the same thing for students at every level of education. By introducing a spirit of play into learning, the student is encouraged to unlearn harmful images of the “good student” and the teacher also gives the student permission to try things out. Instead of feeling that it is only okay to work in areas that one is strong in, a playful attitude encourages mistake-making and experimentation.
26One might think playfulness is a hopelessly weak practice in the face of the “increasing number of insane and neurotics” Dewey noted when he was writing, and in the face of the mental health crisis made worse by the Covid pandemic and addressed by Phillips, but I think there is tough-minded wisdom to it. One needs a playful approach, at times, precisely because one’s upbringing has left one malformed. Play can be extremely hard work, as anyone who has spent extended periods of time with children comes to learn (Paley 2004). And play expresses the type of interest that is central to Dewey’s philosophy of education and the therapeutic action that helps someone get well (Winnicott 1986). When life appears lifeless and when hope seems lost, taking an interest can make a difference (Lear 2022). The desire to get back in motion unites pragmatism and psychoanalysis, and as this paper has argued, facilitating this type of growth takes tremendous effort and insight. Dewey’s philosophy of education emphasizes the positive aspects of growth but operates in full knowledge of the challenges of facilitating growth. Learning from the psychiatry of his time, Dewey understood how humans defend against growth and that overcoming these defenses is central to effective teaching and learning. While it is possible that Dewey could’ve done more to emphasize barriers to growth and how they can be overcome, his consistent call that educators learn from the human sciences, particularly psychology, shouldn’t be downplayed. To be a Deweyan, one must take an interest in engaging with new advancements in the human sciences, especially when these are most challenging to our conception of what a Deweyan education looks like.
27To close, I fear I was overly dismissive of progressive and student-centered educators at the outset of this paper, and I want to remedy this by suggesting that anyone interested in learning more about psychoanalytically informed Deweyan philosophy and practice would benefit from engaging with the incredibly thoughtful and influential work done by Bank Street College of Education. Well-known as a bastion of progressive and experimental education, their developmental-interaction approach is a blend of pragmatism and psychoanalytic work (Nager & Shapiro 2000). What the developmental-interaction approach very clearly shows is that Dewey’s philosophy of education not only can withstand conversations with psychoanalysis but demands these conversations. It also helps answer a question that some readers of this paper may have about what I’ve meant by psychiatric or psychoanalytic. I’ve been intentionally open in my language, assuming different schools and different teachers will hold different ideals and that each student will present their own challenges. The goal is to be responsive to each student and ready to use the intervention or approach that works best for each student, willing to experiment and ready to reconstruct even the best approach if it doesn’t work for the student who needs it (Lazarus 1989; Rosenbaum 2015). By focusing more explicitly on barriers humans erect to growth, pragmatism becomes more efficacious. Philosophers of education, especially, should not be complacent. It is too easy, for example, to assume that giving students choice in activities is Deweyan, without understanding the ways that this practice can be profoundly mis-educative. As well, psychoanalytically inclined readers should not assume that Dewey’s paeans to growth are indicators of a naïve and overoptimistic mind. Rather, Dewey’s love of growth may – in fact – indicate just how rare it is, and how difficult it is to facilitate. As we face a growing mental health crisis in schools, we need to hold in tension Dewey’s love of growth along with his belief that we need to face every and all advancements in the human sciences, especially those that paint the bleakest pictures of human capabilities for transformative growth. By holding Dewey’s radiant ideal of growth in our mind we might be empowered to persist in confronting the onslaught of defenses put up against that growth. And this is exactly what is needed in our time, a time marked by increased resistance to growth if not hopelessness about our capacity to learn how to face the biggest challenges in front of humanity.
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