Learning beyond the known

In this paper issues related to adult learning, such as self-directed and experiential learning are shown to hold a trace of the unknown, which has implications for psychotherapy training and practice. The unknown is traced through the problematic of individualistic approaches that restrict the emergence of unknowns by limiting possibility of the other, hindering recognition of our own cultural position and seeking to avoid anxiety. Learning is also shown to have links with experiences of change and loss, having in common the generation of anxiety, seen as both the driving force to know and the need to close down unknowing. Subsequently, learning is viewed as involving the potential to repeat the already known as well as opening up the possibility for something new. Psychoanalysis and continental philosophy are shown, in different ways, to help our understanding of the reasons for the anxiety occurring in times of transition, also showing the way fragmentary experiences act as a reminder of death. It is proposed that the relational aspects of learning are an important factor in learning to tolerate the anxiety and adult learning is thus seen as requiring possibility of the other, in relationship, in order to permit the unknown.