Research Seminar: The Teacher Complex with Dr Robert Matthews

The Teacher Complex with Dr Robert Matthews describes what might be called a teacher complex. Each teacher is different of course, but there is something typical about what we do, particularly in our behaviours and descriptions of teaching. 

This has led numerous authors to talk about an archetypal basis to teaching.  If such a basis exists, then a further qualification becomes evident along Jungian lines, that of a teacher complex.  In this talk I will outline what such a complex might look like. Two modes of the teacher complex are given, one healthy, where the complex supports a teacher’s enthusiasm and longevity in the profession and the other morbid, where the complex preferences coercive teacher practice and has implications for teacher burnout. A series of dreams are provided to illustrate possible origin, structure and expression of the complex. The application of a non-linear, metaphoric based approach is offered as a pathway to strengthen existing healthy teacher complexes and to remediate the morbid form of the complex.