My Body,Your Body: Speaking the Unspoken between the Thin Therapist and the Eating-Disordered Patient

As thin therapists, who work with eating-disordered patients, we have found that our bodies have an appreciable impact on the treatment. In this article, we discuss issues of transference–countertransference, disclosure, the use of the therapist’s self including the body, and the vicissitudes of the treatment. Patients use the therapist’s thin body in various ways: as evidence to support a number of distorted beliefs and assumptions; as a target of envy; as a container for projections and fantasies. We illustrate through case examples, the importance of including the therapist’s body in the therapeutic dialogue, so that it can be used as a tool, rather than a barrier to recovery.     

When Death Becomes the end of an Analytic Treatment: Necessary Parameters

This paper is based on a social worker psychoanalysts work with an analysand, who during the course of an analysis, was diagnosed with advanced and inoperable lung cancer. The paper explores: changes in the analytic frame; countertransference responses; and how the analyst worked with her patient until the very end. Working with the dying patient may offer perspective on how we think about and approach the termination phase in other psychoanalytic work as well.     

Understanding Play in the Treatment of an Encopretic Boy

This paper provides a clinical illustration of the symbolic use of play in the treatment of an encopretic boy of eight. The historical and contemporary literature relating to both play and to encopresis are reviewed. Process material and case formulation are presented to provide examples of the way in which intrapsychic conflict is interpreted.     

Therapeutic Dilemmas in Cross-Cultural Practice with Asian American Adolescents

The following study proposes that differences in traditions and values between Western clinicians and Asian American clients manifests in therapeutic dilemmas, and offers recommendations for cross-cultural practice with Asian American adolescents and their families. The themes that will be examined are independence vs. acculturation/individuation, equality vs. hierarchy/authority, and supportive vs. dynamic treatment.