Revista Latinoamericana de Psicopatologia Fundamental, volume 15, n.3, setembro 2012 (supplement)

EDITORIAL

Supplement on Eating Disorders

Manoel Tosta BerlinckThis special edition of the Latin-American Journal of Fundamental Psychopathology offers its readers a number of texts by Brazilian clinicians with vast experience in psychotherapy and research related to eating disorders. All the papers published here were presented at the Fifth International Congress of Fundamental Psychopathology and the Eleventh Brazilian Congress of Fundamental Psychopathology, whose specific theme was eating disorders. 

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ARTIGOSAnorexia: a Failure in the Work of MelancholiaAna Paula GonzagaThe self-reproach against their own bodies seen in patients with eating disorders has led us to posit the existence of failures in the work of melancholia. Defined by Freud in 1915, this process of melancholia is aimed at repairing a loss felt as unbearable by the ego and that triggers off a violent struggle with ambivalent feelings toward the lost object. The resulting hatred is aimed at the shadow of the object that falls on the ego. Especially in anorexia nervosa, there seems to be a regressive movement that goes beyond this.

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The Mother-Daughter Relationship in Eating Disorders: Psychotherapy Group of MothersAlicia I. Weisz Cobelo and Ana Paula Gonzaga  Psychotherapeutic interventions that bring about differentiation, separation, individuation and autonomy in the mother-daughter relationship are recommended as treatment for eating disorders. With this goal in mind, a psychotherapy group for mothers was organized in an outpatient program for adolescents with eating disorders at a public institution, as one of the psychotherapeutic approaches in the multidisciplinary treatment of adolescent patients. Evidence suggests that this approach can be relevant and effective in the treatment of eating disorders.

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The Body in Anorexia and BulimiaMaria Helena FernandesThe psychoanalytic clinic for anorexia and bulimia puts us into immediate contact with the question of the body, as well as with aspects typical of adolescence. These aspects especially include difficulties in early relationships with the mother regarding the management of the drives, and relationships with primary identification. Consequently, we are dealing with ideals, differentiation, autonomy, time and death. Here hypotheses that were drawn up on the basis of metapsychology are discussed, with the objective of contributing to a broader understanding of the construction of the bodily image. This process includes the perception, representation and internal experience of the patients’ own bodies. The impasses experienced in the analytic situation also indicate particularities in managing the transference in these cases.

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Orality Disorders in Melancholia: Acedia as StagnationAna Cecilia Magtaz and Manoel Tosta BerlinckIn this article valuable contributions by Lasègue, Freud and Abraham are discussed, as they are all indispensible to the understanding of orality disorders in melancholia. Although none of the above authors used the exact term “orality disorders,” their understandings of both hysteria and melancholia are important in the debate surrounding the clinical treatment of these difficulties. Sadness is a common denominator for the authors, but contributions on acedia, the “noonday demon” mentioned by Agamben, are also important. Acedia is defined as stagnation, a desperate lack of vigor when faced with a wearying and demanding situation. Those who suffer from chronic acedia feel great inertia and are unable to envision a future.They see their creativity wane away, especially due to the painful isolation caused by what might be called anguished sadness – a denial of sadness through manic action. 

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‘La Comunità La Vela’: A Psychoanalytically Oriented Approach to Eating DisordersAndrea Vilanova and Ana Cristina FigueiredoThe authors discuss the experience of treating eating disorders at a psychoanalytically oriented therapeutic community in Italy. Teamwork and group activities are the bases of the treatment, at least to the point that the experience of the collectivity does not hinder the individual subjective expression of each patient. The treatment includes several different steps in the process of the admittance and release of patients and the subjectivation involved in the process is considered very important. A clinical vignette is presented at the end of the article.

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Obesity: Listening Beyond the Fat CellsJunia de Vilhena; Joana V. Novaes and Carlos Mendes RosaWhat relation does obesity have with mental suffering? The authors investigated the relationship between traumas, melancholia, and loss, and show that obesity represents an attempt to fill in a void that goes beyond food. Based on the recognition of mental suffering, the authors underscore the need for a new type of therapeutic listening that promotes new ways of dealing with the emptiness of one’s existence.

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Non Ducor Duco. On the Urgent Need to Control, as Seen in Eating DisordersCybelle WeinbergThe need to control, seen in clinical work with patients having eating disorders, led us to wonder whether this type of symptom might be the expression of obsessive factors or even of melancholy. Other aspects of this clinical work, such as the refusal to accept reality, the difficulty in dealing with losses, and self-accusatory discourse, warrant the association of such disorders with melancholy and underline its seriousness.

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CAPA / COVERCapa: Teresa BerlinckProjeto Gráfico: Associação Universitária de Pesquisa em Psicopatologia Fundamental