Introduction

With sincere gratitude to the Editor Susan Warshaw and the Editorial and Executive Boards, I am delighted to introduce this special issue of the Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy (JICAP) devoted exclusively to the psychoanalytic conceptualization and treatment of eating disorders. We hope this issue joins recent publications—Petrucelli (2014), Petrucelli and Stuart (2011), and Zerbe (2008), to name an important few—in addressing a significant gap in the psychoanalytic literature and serves as a meaningful contribution to a larger dialogue about the integration of psychoanalytic and symptom-focused approaches to the treatment of these often life-threatening illnesses. I believe we gathered a number of important contributions in this special issue, each of which I will discuss, but first I wish to clarify our purpose.

Despite the long history of psychoanalytic contributions to the treatment of eating disorders, contemporary endeavors have lost sight of the insights our field has provided. In my own work, I am repeatedly struck by how little of the psychoanalytic sensibility infuses eating disorders advocacy, research, and evidence-based treatment (see Wooldridge [2016] for my own efforts to counter this trend). Indeed, these endeavors emphasize and endorse evidence-based treatment focused on rapid symptom reduction. For example, the “gold standard” treatment for adolescents with anorexia nervosa is family-based therapy, which promotes an “agnostic” position with regard to etiological factors, particularly the family’s role in the child’s developing an eating disorder (Lock et al., 2001). In fact, there is considerable evidence suggesting that no particular family style is implicated in the development of anorexia nervosa (Eisler, 1995). Furthermore, this position can be effective in mitigating shame and stigma, which may facilitate treatment engagement—an essential first step in all work with this difficult population.

Yet therapists who work with e