Premium
A psychodynamically informed, integrated psychotherapy for anorexia nervosa
Author(s) -
Steiger Howard,
Israël Mimi
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
journal of clinical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.124
H-Index - 119
eISSN - 1097-4679
pISSN - 0021-9762
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1097-4679(199906)55:6<741::aid-jclp7>3.0.co;2-0
Subject(s) - psychology , psychotherapist , anorexia nervosa , dyad , eating disorders , interpersonal communication , therapeutic relationship , interpersonal relationship , anorexia , coping (psychology) , clinical psychology , developmental psychology , social psychology , medicine
Anorexia nervosa is a multiply determined syndrome, thought to require integrated, multimodal treatment. In this article, we discuss the place of psychodynamically inspired psychotherapy techniques in the treatment of Anorexia Nervosa, and attempt to provide a practical heuristic for the application of such techniques with anorexic clients. Our recommendations for therapy emphasize confrontation of interpersonal patterns arising within the therapeutic dyad and linkage of these patterns to parallel adaptations that structure the client's generalized patterns of coping and eating symptoms. Case vignettes, drawn from different clinical contexts, are used to illustrate dynamic themes that frequently emerge in psychotherapeutic work with anorexic clients, and techniques that use interactions that occur in the therapeutic relationship to (i) expose implicit metaphors between interpersonal adaptations and eating symptoms, and (ii) balance against the intensity of anorexic preoccupations. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Clin Psychol 55: 741–753, 1999.