ABSTRACT
Clinicians treating psychosomatic patients must, therefore, discover forms of communication that can bridge the gap between embodiment and symbolization in words. The case describes the long-term treatment of a woman in which the central clinical consideration for many years was the search for alternative modes of communication. But communication took time, patience, and ingenuity until symbolic speech became available in our sessions and Kate could open herself to interpretive work. Kate's treatment is one example of how non-verbal communication, and, to some degree, work in displacement, can help patient and analyst bridge the gap between silence and speech. Kate's body—its hunger, its lack of control, its dangerous obesity—was the container and the "language" of an otherwise unexpressed, and largely unexperienced, emotional life. Kate was terrified and controlled by the continuous insults screaming in her head and she worried that they would never stop.
