ABSTRACT
The secrets that patients with eating disorders bring to therapy reveal a basic ambivalence between urges to retain and expel. Their relationship to secrets could be thought of like their relationship to food—the dynamics in the tensions of wanting and not wanting to know themselves and be known in revealing their secrets to another; doing and undoing, depriving and oversharing. The core of their identity, their most “secret self,” is felt to be somehow spoiled or dirty in its knowing and revealing itself to an Other and self protection occurs through the maladaptive function of dissociation. Dissociation is not knowing there is a secret you are keeping. This chapter explores how relating in new ways to eating disordered patients facilitates the uncovering of secrets so that the patient can move from “being” the secret to “knowing” the secret.
