Beauty and the Beast

This chapter stresses the central role of an empathic and experience-near stance in a self-psychologically oriented treatment of a female patient with anorexia nervosa (AN). It shows the clear correlation between the patient's sense of the therapist's empathy and the decrease of her anorexic symptoms: Each time that the patient sensed the therapist departing from her point of view and deviating from an experience-near stance, her symptomatology increased. Conversely, a consistent experience-near stance of the therapist eventually allowed for a growing dependence on human self object relations instead of the previously preoccupation with food restriction. After issues of the injured self were worked through, the patient was able to touch Oedipal content.