TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2018//
TI  - Too much to swallow? Some reflections on adolescent overdose
JO  - Journal of child psychotherapy
A1  - Mirvis, H.
SP  - 189
EP  - 201
VL  - 44
IS  - 2
N2  - Overdose, as a subcategory of self-harm, is under-represented in the psychoanalytic literature in terms of attempts to understand what may underpin it. Given the current prevalence of overdose amongst self-harming adolescents, it seems important to try to understand this from a psychoanalytic perspective. Drawing on clinical material from adolescent patients who overdosed, the author attempts to make sense of how overdose was used by these patients as a means of unconsciously communicating their difficulties. It is suggested that overdose might be understood in the following ways: as a physical enactment of the way in which the patient's mind is overwhelmed by thoughts, feelings and experiences which it cannot digest or process; as a disguised wish beneath overt self-destructiveness to take in a 'good feed'; as an enactment of past and present force-feeding, both literally and figuratively, by parents or carers; as an enactment of an internalised death wish from an object which has projected something poisonous into the patient. © 2018, © 2018 Association of Child Psychotherapists.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 0075-417X
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0075417X.2018.1487991
ID  - ref1
ER  -