Problems of internalization: a button is a button is-not.
Analysts hope to help the patient internalize a relationship with the analyst that contrasts with the original archaic object relation. In this paper, the author describes particular difficulties in working with a patient whose defenses and anxieties were bulimic, her movement toward internalization inevitably undone. Several issues are considered: how does the nonsymbolizing patient come to internalize the analyst's understanding, and when this does not hold, what is the nature of the patient's subsequent methods of dispersal? When the patient can maintain connection to the analyst as a good object, even fleetingly, in the depressive position, the possibility of internalization and symbolic communication is increased.
Training and Supervising Analyst with the Contemporary Freudian Society in Washington, DC.
Shelley
S
Rockwell
D052018:Bulimia Nervosa / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy; D003020:Clothing / Q000523:psychology; D003674:Defense Mechanisms; D003863:Depression / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D009034:Mother-Child Relations / Q000523:psychology; D009769:Object Attachment; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations; D011575:Psychoanalytic Therapy / Q000379:methods*; D013811:Psychotherapeutic Processes; D012677:Sensation; D013561:Symbolism; D014839:Vomiting / Q000523:psychology
Kleinian theory; Sensory experience; adhesive skin identification; analytic relationship; autistic defense; bulimia; containment; good object; internal objects; internalization; introjection; symbolization; transference