Citation

Hirsch NA. Br. J. Psychother. 1993; 10(1): 26-32.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1993, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1752-0118.1993.tb00626.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The paper describes a number of final year students with eating disorders. The students shared a ?feeling? that they were unable to live independently. Having difficulty containing and experiencing their psychological life, they were also unable to feel physically contained. The notion of the skin as a container is developed and extended to the lining of the digestive system and the paper explores disturbances in the students' perception of this system. Lacking a sense of a permeable ?digestive boundary? between internal and external, they equally lack a sense of self and other as seen in their relationship to the Polytechnic. Defending themselves against experiences of separation their wish is to be inside a refuge and their presenting anxiety is the fear that the impending end of their course will threaten them with expulsion and disintegration. In their symbiotic relationship to the Polytechnic the students are understood to be replicating an early relationship to their mother that predates a differentiation between psyche and soma.