ABSTRACT
The discussion in Chapter 6 of the relationship between the art process and body boundaries is essential to understanding the nature of the cannibalistic imagery which so frequently occurs.
In one directed art exercise, a bulimic and an anorectic patient paired up to paint together. What occurred between them, highlighted by the process within the activity, was fundamental to both patients’ ways of relating to others. The anorectic patient (A) was unable, in the presence of the bulimic patient (B), to create any independent images. She feared a violent retaliation by B if she were to do so. She felt that to ‘be herself’ would provoke B into attacking her; instead she chose constantly to appease B (who did not require appeasement) by following her work around the paper, adding to and elaborating on B’s images. She felt that B’s capacity to ‘swallow her up’ on the page was so strong that her best line of defence was ‘not to be there’, so that B could have nothing to devour except the empty space. Patient B, on the other hand, was frightened by the strength of her own feelings and by her capacity to dominate A. Rather than feeling appeased, when A expressed her reason for chasing B around the paper, B explained how the very thing from which A had been attempting to protect herself (namely, being swallowed up) had in fact been her own sentiment. A’s protestations that she feared being devoured by B had actually created a situation in which B felt that she was swallowed up.
