ABSTRACT
The effectiveness of the work that the therapist and client engage in to understand and reverse the food refusal and to change fundamentally the woman's physical experience of self depends on restarting developmental processes that have been arrested for a considerable length of time. It focuses the attention of the psychotherapeutic work, in a particular direction the contacting of the arrested or embryonic self behind the defence structure. The goal of the therapy is that the therapist and the client work together carefully and painstakingly through the defence structure, to the original, so that the 'building' can achieve the glory for which it was destined. Being able to catch a 'mistake' and then trace the ways in which the client has dealt with the disappointment becomes a part of their therapeutic work. Anorexia is most particularly a defence against dependency needs; it is a statement about how unneedy the woman has had to be from early on in her life.
