You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
B, a 26-year-old postgraduate student training to work with children with learning difficulties, has been attending therapy twice weekly for two years. B started to be bulimic when she was 16 following the traumatic deaths of her parents and grandmother within four months of one another. At the time of coming to therapy, she was faced with the task of clearing out the effects of the house she had inherited from her parents, and was also anxious that her boyfriend would ‘invade’ her space when he returned from his trip abroad. Another precipitating factor was the suicide of her first boyfriend earlier that year. She had attended his funeral, and cried for the first time since the deaths of her mother, father and grandmother.
My first impression was of a tall slim young woman with a classically beautiful face, in heavy boots, jeans and a large baggy jumper, tramping into the therapy room from her walk across the park. She sat down, embarrassed and awkward, like a shy and likeable adolescent. However, there was also a responsible, grown-up aspect to her, intelligent and with a sense that she had integrated some wholesome values somewhere along the line. In the countertransference I was aware of both a maternal desire to reach out to her neediness (scarcely hidden behind her veneer of pseudo ‘cool’ independence), and also a somewhat businesslike response of wanting to ‘sort