ABSTRACT
Psychoanalytic thinking about eating disorders took an important step forward when it began to be possible to think about symptoms as representing disturbances in relationships. This chapter focuses on the different means that the patients employ to feel in control of their internal worlds, and their possible motives for doing so. It argues that eating disorders could be considered as mechanisms that patients use to buttress manic defences against depressive pain associated with the reality of the oedipal situation. The chapter concludes by attempting to link the symptoms and phantasies of the three patients with the varying nature and seriousness of their psychopathology. For all the differences in the kinds of symptoms they present and in the pathology underlying the symptoms, patients with eating disorders do have in common a peculiar way of controlling the analyst and the analytic situation.
