ABSTRACT
A group of seven women with eating disorders had been meeting for over a year in a once-weekly group, for one-and-a-half hours. There had been many problems in attendance and punctuality with excuses usually being that the woman had to attend to someone else at the time of the group. The group was therefore somewhat fragmented and characterised by angry, envious feelings towards the therapist alternating with compliant, timid behaviour. The women found it difficult to confront each other verbally but did so through their artwork. A recurring complaint was of not being able to do what they really wanted, of being victims of circumstances outside their control. The word 'It' kept cropping up: 'It's not possible'; 'It won't happen'; 'I can't do It'; 'It's making me fat'; and so on. The group noticed this word recurring over and over again in one session and decided to try to visualise exactly what 'It' was.
