ABSTRACT
The giving and receiving of gifts, both in and out of the consulting room, provides a rich external arena to explore the anorexic patients' impoverished inner world. The psychoanalytic position about gift giving seems to be embedded in the taboo around action rather than verbal production. However, with the effort to broaden the range of patients who can benefit from psychoanalytic treatments, contemporary psychoanalysis now includes many ideas that were once considered "parameters". Hilde Bruch, 1978, one of the pioneers in the understanding of anorexia, believed that most anorexics have spent their entire lives wanting to live up to their family's expectations and always failing. In this chapter Jill C. Howard describes the giving and receiving of gifts using Tina, who is one of the anorexic patients'. The enactments that have occurred over the giving and receiving of gifts have provided a rich arena to actually experience Tina's inner world.
