ABSTRACT
This chapter describes an interpersonal psychoanalytic treatment approach to help patients with binge eating problems and find the sense of personal agency and self-authority that allows them to become fully alive. Binge eaters often have problems in self-regulation and self-soothing. The most common psychotherapy treatment for eating disorders is a cognitive-behavioral (CBT) approach. The chapter argues that from an interpersonal perspective the experiences of the binge and of restriction are complementary mirror images of each other, figure-ground in the same gestalt, two sides of the same coin and present in all eating disorders. The challenge for the therapist is to allow herself to lose her personal inner stability, equilibrium, and spend long periods of time fluctuating between being out of control and controlling. The interpersonal psychoanalyst, Edgar Levenson, enters the patient's world to find how binge eating takes place and their treatment.
