Hungers and Compulsions: The Psychodynamic Treatment of Eating Disorders and Addictions [Paperback]

This book will help therapists understand and treat patients suffering from mild to dangerous forms of eating disorders, other compulsions and addictions, such as alcoholism, and even erotic attachments.

The chapters help therapists think creatively about these types of patients who are coming to therapy more frequently than ever, and to see the effects of treatment. The problems that arise in therapy are explored in essays about dissociation, self-regulation, self-destructive behavior, enactment, and other clinical issues.

The first half of the book addresses specific problems associated with patients who have eating disorders. The editors explore the patient's conflicts, affect regulation, transference, behavior, as well as the countertransference issues that inevitably arise in therapy. The second half broadens the scope and addresses a spectrum of addictions and associated issues such as creativity, sexuality and the transference.

Jean Petrucelli, Ph.D., F.P.P.R.,is co-founder and co-director of Eating Disorders and Substance Abuse Service, and is supervisor of psychotherapy, teaching faculty, William Alanson White Institute.

Catherine Stuart, Ph.D.,is co-founder and co-director of Eating Disorders and Substance Abuse Service, and supervising analyst, teaching faculty, William Alanson White Institute. Dr. Stuart is also on faculty at the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health.

Hungers and Compulsions, written primarily by colleagues who espouse an interpersonal/relational perspective, will be of interest to clinicians who follow other approaches as well. The reader is offered vivid accounts of close encounters with very challenging patients. Two leitmotifs of the book are the place of insight vs. affective engagement in the curative process, and the love-hate relationship with Freud and Ferenczi that many psychotherapists share. The final section on the ill-starred Winnicott/Khan relationship is a timely clsv