Psychoanalytic treatment of the obese person. Part III

This paper is an attempt to clarify some of the issues which face the psychiatrist in his efforts at treating the obese patient through analytic means. A thoroughgoing bias in Western culture impairs the psychiatric and non-psychiatric medical care of the obese person. Inconclusive evidence concerning the causal relation between obesity and chronic disease does not deter this cultural bias from exaggerating the role that obesity is thought to play in disease process. Whatever contribution it makes to physical illness, obesity remains a substantial social disability that is frequently associated with self-hate and feelings of ineffectiveness. Scientific investigations indicate that adiposity is determined by interactions of genetic and environmental influences acting at different levels of complexity within the organism. Hence, the adipocyte itself may influence existing fatness and retard weight reduction. Constitutional factors affecting the hypothalamus may contribute to obesity in certain individuals. Also, cortical effects determine maladaptive eating behavior and excessive adiposity. Poor eating habits which are associated with emotional conflict seem to strongly affect the development and continuance of obesity in most fat persons. The interaction among adipocyte, hypothalamus, and cerebral cortex remains unclear. The various treatments of obesity have been shown to be of little impact in helping overweight persons to sustain weight loss. Diet control, exercise, group psychotherapy, and behavior modification show slight benefit. Recent controlled studies dispute earlier claims that behavior modification is effective in achieving meaningful and lasting weight loss. Claims that intestinal bypass procedures are a useful treatment also require further supporting evidence. Psychoanalytic or intensive sustained psychotherapeutic treatment of the obese person emphasizes exploration of the entire personality. As long-neglected constructive forces are stregthened, weight loss may proceed. Psychoanalytic treatment is not indicated for obesity uncomplicated by neurotic distortions. In the presence of interpersonal problems and personal ineffectiveness, psychoanalysis has real utility. It is not clear that obesity is a major determinant of impaired physical or emotional health. Rather, the medical indictment of obesity seems to stem from the need to justify an intensely negative cultural bias. Casual disregard of this fact and of the complexity involving issues of etiology and treatment may signify inadequate appreciation in the psychoanalyst of the extent to which he participates in this cultural bias. The continuing failure of medical science to devise a means to help fat persons sustain weight loss to any meaningful degree has prevented the development of studies which would show if weight reduction truly does provide uniformly enhanced physical and emotional well-being...

Prison homosexuality and its effect on post-prison sexual behavior

Although there has grown up to a considerable literature on sex experiences in prison, little has been written on the post-prison behavioral patterns of those who, voluntarily or involuntarily, become initiated into homosexuality while incarcerated. In the light of the considerable number of prisoners and ex-prisoners in the original Kinsey sample, it is possible that the Institute for Sex Research might have in its files material that would shed light on this problem. To date, nothing has been forthcoming. In one of the few references to the subject, Kirkham (1972, p. 42) suggests that sexual experiences in prison may have permanent effects on the lives of some of the participants: "Can such men return to conventional heterosexual lives after release, or has the experience of being forced into acts of passive homosexuality been so traumatic as to preclude the resumption of sexual relations with members of the opposite sex?" In a search for an answer to his question, the present paper studies ex-prisoners whose initiation into homosexuality occurred during prison.

Interpersonal resistance to change: a study of a fat woman who became thin

The paper reports on the psychoanalytically-oriented psychotherapy of a very obese woman who, after a rather prolonged therapy, "decided" to reduce. During the weight loss process, significant reactions were noted from her son, daughter, brothers, sisters-in-law, customers, employees, husband, and therapist, which became crucial interferences with the continuing weight loss and specific resistances in the therapy. The identification of and the working through of these resistances significantly increased and consolidated her self-understanding. In that the response to major psychological changes was minimal as compared to the response to her physical change, it is hypothesized that physical change is more basically related to sense of self-continuity and hence more threatening to experience and observe.

Stoicism and paranoia

A paranoid strain is manifest in Stoic utterances generally, especially in the Stoic conception of autarky, where the Sage regards himself as distinctly "other" in the midst of society, and indifferent to its values, except as he dissembles his indifference. Now, influential theories of paranoia stress a projective process: for Freudians, the projection of repressed homosexual libido in altered form, for Ovesey, a "pseudohomosexual" anxiety arising out of a maladaptation in the male to the culturally assigned competitive male role, a failure perceived as effeminate. But Stoicism took root in the culture (Classical Greece) where homosexuality, far from being universally regarded as degenerate, was widely extolled as the norm for superior men and the most advantageous frame work for the tutelage of aristocratic boys. It would seem unlikely that paranoia in this context would reflect uneasiness over unconscious homoerotic (or distorted pseudo-erotic) strivings. What light is shed on the purported projection of either homosexual or pseudo-homosexual anxiety by paranoid elements in Stoicism?

Psychoanalysis and the community mental health movement

Psychoanalysis and CMHM were once enemies. Psychoanalysis has made noteworthy advances toward the CMHM idea both in technique changes and in community involvement. It is possible that CMHM may finally reject all psychoanalytic contribution and face its future without a theory. If that takes place, the CMHM some day in its future may turn a corner and find itself face to face with the lonely, individual man, conscious of his past and fearful of the unexplained anxiety within him. It is then that the CMHM will find itself once again studying the works of Herbert Marcuse, Erik Erikson, Sigmund Freud, and the psychoanalytic world.

Transference and countertransference problems in a critically ill patient

The severe depression of a patient critically ill with myasthenia gravis necessitated psychiatric intervention. Over a period of two years three different approaches were utilized by three therapists: 1) intensive psychotherapy, 2) limited supportive psychotherapy, and 3) therapy based on the therapist's presentation of himself as an all-powerful healing figure. Improvement occurred in phase one, severe regression in phase two and marked improvement and death in phase three. Transference and countertransference factors were of critical importance in each phase.