Sunflowers Don’t Always Seek the Sun*

The following text addresses atypical eating, building upon previously discussed ideas and enhanced with clinical observations from the analytical process of a young man. Currently twenty years old, he was referred at sixteen by the paediatrician who had delivered him and continued to care for him, and was suspecting “anorexia.” The term is within inverted commas as it was not conclusively diagnosed by the doctor or the author of this text. The patient's limited food intake was part of a broader picture of cessation in emotional development. The author proposes significant differences in the primitive relational trajectory at the origins of atypical eating habits of both men and women. Viewing these habits as communications of previously compromised mental states rather than an isolated “disease,” the author emphasises the importance of the transferential relationship as a general guiding thread in analytical processes, particularly as a sine qua non condition for augmenting the possibility of favourable evolution of these generally severe and challenging patients. This clinical case thus highlights the analytical relationship as the main modifying factor in Fred's life. The analysis continues uninterrupted, with three sessions per week, during the pandemic online, and again in-person as soon as it was possible to return to the office.