This paper deals with the problem of the so-called "school phobia" and school failure. Based on my research so far, I have been able to show that the desire for knowledge of school dropouts is often blocked by psychological challenges, existential questions and anxiety. In this paper I would like to illustrate this with a clinical case of phobia.

It is about a young  university student from France who decided to work through his suffering. I have been accompanying him for about two years at the rate of one session per week. 

The student complains of numerous situations of social phobia, bullying, exam anxiety, fears during train or car rides, or fear of speaking in front of others in class.  

His school phobia begins in kindergarten. The separation from his mother is very difficult. Especially since the teacher grumbles a lot with him, he is afraid of being penetrated by the teacher's gaze and words.

In the first school year he playfully enjoys doing the math work in advance. The teacher, however, insinuates that he has copied from his schoolmate and calls him a "freeloader". The student reacts to this misunderstanding and disregard with "laziness, doing nothing"at school : "je m'en fou". He adheres less and less to limits and rules. He is diagnosed as hyperactive and is prescribed Ritalin. In some subjects, however, he shows his excellent knowledge. Several teachers predict that he will get nowhere.

He is teased, tracked down in his hiding places, chased around the schoolyard and is even seriously injured once. He does not succeed in his school career the way he wants; whether it is through poor grades in math or obscure institutional rules.

Nevertheless, he retains the desire to learn what he likes. In some subjects, he aims for perfection. Despite completing an apprenticeship, he is unable to find a job, probably because of his shyness. After a two-year absence, he returns to school and manages to get a certificate for university entrance.

I will show how the analytical process has worked so far. Working through signifiers, situations of fear and dreams, the occupation of " finding a secured place for himself" shows up. His phobic phantasm is characterized by mistrust. Because of the "gaze" and the course introduction of some professors he is "already sure" that he will not pass the exam. Here it becomes apparent that the imaginary has the upper hand and is not sufficiently dialectized with the real. 

Similar to "little Hans", the student is concerned with a "more" of enjoyment. (Freud, 1909) However, when the analysand encounters someone who seems too intrusive, panic attacks occur. They are not an expression of castration anxiety ( Lacan 1994), but precisely of the lack of separation by a third party and thus of the fragile symbolic network. When the mediation of the symbolic law of impossibility works, a transformation from enjoyment to desire occurs and the protagonist can better manage the panic moments.

Meanwhile, the analysand can develop strategies to prepare for exams in a more organized way and be less driven by anxiety. He can set limits to his rampant drive for knowledge. Education occurs through a loss of enjoyment, writes Lacan (2001, 364). In parallel, the analysand presents numerous dreams, thanks to which he cautiously - without losing too much control - approaches the truth of his own desire. In this way, he makes contact with his own strangeness, the real and thus also with his split as a subject. Only the future will show whether he can also drop his gaze as an object (little) a.

The paper is based on a still ongoing psychoanalytic cure. According to the basic Freudian rule, I listen to the analysand with free-floating attention so that the otherness of the Other finds its place. My questioning, interpretating and scanding have the goal to open the analysand to his unconscious knowledge. The verbatim are written down after each session and reflected on them between sessions. They are regularly discussed in the control analysis. This helps to question myself, to reflect on my narcissistic security and depressiveness regarding my knowledge. It is also a matter of analyzing the moments when I am deaf as analyst and of discussing questions about the psychic structure and of recognizing aspects of transference as well as analyzing my own counter-transference. In the transference of the student, it became apparent that his fear of encountering the external "stranger" was related to his fear of the "internal alterity," the Other as the treasure of the unconscious. Working on this analytical process, I am interested in the evolution of the students’ position regarding his complaint and the responsibility he sees in using his symptom. It is also about uncovering the basic phantasm and, if possible, crossing it, i.e., dropping the object (little) a. For this I support the associating by interpreting and analyzing the linking of the signifiers to chains of signifiers. The analysis demands from the analysand to deconstruct as far as possible his imaginary ego and to leave the field to the unconscious knowledge. As a subject he should be able to live his singular way more freely and to organize his studies more free of fear. I therefore support him to assume the split between the imaginary and the real in order to trace his singular desire. The accompaniment is arranged in such a way that the analysand first assumes knowledge to the analyst as imagined subject. Then the analyst as Other is to help that the symptom can be verbalized as a message and opened to ambiguity, and finally he must help the analysand to see the recognition of dependence on the object (little) a. Insofar as the analyst figures the object a, I am particularly attentive to how the analysand relates to me. All this is considered as a prerequisite for him to respect the law of the impossible and thus to form himself by also being able to limit the jouissance. (Lacan,2001, 364)

Some life experiences are so destabilizing that eventually they led young people to resume school. School phobia or dropping out of school is an addressed symptom. It's a means of situating oneself as subject. (Weber, Voyonva, 2021) It is a subjective construction regarding the question of the desire of the Other and a response to the lack of a definitive answer. As in the clinical case described, some have no confidence in life and think they must fight for everything themselves or must steal it from life. They are afraid that someone will see through this. If someone takes a gaze at this subjective attitude, they get scared and can react quite aggressively and close themselves off to the gaze of the other person. Often trapped in their ideas of a certain self-will without allowing alterity, they hardly face their unconscious knowledge nor speaking. As in the clinical case described, it takes a long analytical work to arrive as a split subject, to accept the "lack of being", the otherness, to detach oneself from the disregard and the lies of another, from the "gaze" as object little a. A clinical work like this is an example for me in teacher education. It seems important to me that teachers recognize the relation to learning has to do fundamentally with the unconscious relation of the respective subject, to the Other as well as to the contingency of life. Of course, it is also about showing how intrusive and destructive the power of the teacher can be and how he or she has to deal with students as subjects. This is an ethical challenge that is itself related to the unconscious desire of the teacher.

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