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Tavistock Clinic Book Series

Internal landscapes and foreign bodies: Eating disorders and other pathologies

Klein’s model of projective and introjective processes and Bion’s theory of the relationship between container and contained have become increasingly significant in much clinical work. In a highly imaginative development of these models of thought, the distinguished clinician Gianna Williams, one of the leading figures in the field, elucidates the psychodynamics of these processes in the context of impairment of dependent relationships and of eating disorders in both men and women. This is a timely and brilliant account of an area of psychopathology that is rapidly growing in significance. The author provides a subtle understanding of some of the obstacles, which stand in the way of patients seeking and receiving therapeutic help.

‘Internal Landscapes and Foreign Bodies’ explores the problems, which arise in forming and sustaining intimate relationships. This book is based on Gianna Williams’ work over many years in the Tavistock Clinic, including work in the Eating Disorders Workshop of the Adolescent Department. It examines how dependency is defended against in a variety of ways, which involve refusing to take in good experiences, by keeping some relationships at bay and controlling others. These defences can take the form of eating disorders but also have an important significance in a variety of other pathologies.

Gianna Williams

Table of Contents

  1. The inner world of the child
  2. Thinking and learning in deprived children
  3. Double deprivation
  4. On gang dynamics
  5. Self-esteem and object esteem
  6. On the process of internalisation
  7. Poor feeders
  8. Reversal of the ‘container/contained’ relationship
  9. The no-entry system of defences: reflections on the assessment of adolescents suffering from eating disorders
  10. On introjective processes: the hypothesis of an ‘Omega Function’
  11. Foreign bodies

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Last Updated: 28/03/2006