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.
This issue of the Swiss Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine is exclusively devoted to a detailed study of a case of anorexia nervosa. In a stimulating, erudite monograph, the author casts his net wide. He conducts his readers through the tangled web of the aetiology of the illness, and through the treatment period of almost three years. He is alive to the dynamics of the transference/countertransference manifestations, and puts to good use his patient's fertile symbolic material, her dreams, paintings and stories. The reader is provided with a rich feast.
Rode is much taken up with Jung's ideas on the self-regulating system in the psyche, perhaps not acknowledging sufficiently how chaotic this system becomes in psychotic states. His grasp, however, of the psychosomatic mechanisms in anorexics is comprehensive, and these are discussed with admirable clarity.
Furthermore, relevant psychological theories from the Jungian spectrum of the literature are extensively referred to. Yet by confining himself to Jungian contributions, the author inevitably omits many important references.
Rode's account shows exceptional willingness to reveal himself and his analytic style, his subjective as well as his objective experiences. He does not confine himself to his patient's struggles; he also dwells on his own. He reveals his considerable skills as a clinician, and demonstrates his ability to formulate and organise the material.
Dr A. Hicklins's editorial comments emphasise that, in psychosomatic disorders, and especially in cases of anorexia nervosa, the outer and inner worlds are inextricably interwoven. Non-verbal communications take on a unique significance. He stresses that anorexics almost totally negate life, so that the ever-threatening, potentially avoidable confrontation with death, the final catastrophe, overshadows the work. A sense of foreboding and guilt are never absent. The therapist is constantly pushed to his limit.
Rode expands these themes, and sees these patients as s