ABSTRACT
Differentiation can be a dangerous proposition. In all her diaries, Hannah has used external bodies to create some sense of cause and effect. She has used others to contemplate the consequences of emotion and action, linking internal intentional states with external events, that is, temporal linking. As described earlier, without the capacity to safely contemplate cause and effect, a person cannot create the meaningful temporal links necessary to self regulate, differentiate, and symbolize experience. In such a compromised state of development, one may use self-destructive violence to create these links (Fonagy and Target, 1998). This violence creates a form of self-regulation located solely on the body, where the only temporal links that can be created are those which are concrete and physical, literally visible on the skin (e.g., cutting) or through behaviors like bingeing and purging. Not surprisingly, with Hannah's differentiation from Eric comes a distinct shift in the way she uses bulimia as a form of temporal linking and self-regulation.
