Hungers and Compulsions: The Psychodynamic Treatment of Eating Disorders and Addictions [Hardcover]

Jean Petrucelli (Author), Catherine Stuart (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0765703181 | ISBN-13: 978-0765703187 | Publication Date: November 1, 2001

This book will help therapists understand and treat patients suffering from mild to dangerous forms of eating disorders, other compulsions and addictions, such as alcoholism, and even erotic attachments.
The chapters help therapists think creatively about these types of patients who are coming to therapy more frequently than ever, and to see the effects of treatment. The problems that arise in therapy are explored in essays about dissociation, self-regulation, self-destructive behavior, enactment, and other clinical issues.
The first half of the book addresses specific problems associated with patients who have eating disorders. The editors explore the patient's conflicts, affect regulation, transference, behavior, as well as the countertransference issues that inevitably arise in therapy. The second half broadens the scope and addresses a spectrum of addictions and associated issues such as creativity, sexuality and the transference.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Hungers and Compulsions, written primarily by colleagues who espouse an interpersonal/relational perspective, will be of interest to clinicians who follow other approaches as well. The reader is offered vivid accounts of close encounters with very challenging patients. Two leitmotifs of the book are the place of insight vs. affective engagement in the curative process, and the love-hate relationship with Freud and Ferenczi that many psychotherapists share. The final section on the ill-starred Winnicott/Khan relationship is a timely coda. (Arnold D. Richards, M.D. )

Petrucelli and Stuart bring together a diverse set of psychoanalytic and psychodynamic writers who address the issues of eating disorders, compulsions, and addictions from multiple perspectives. The authors focus on clinical material and explore psychoanalytically informed treatment. For a clinician working with any of the identified disorders or issues in this book, these collected writings can help inform their clinical practice and expand their knowledge of treatment. (Contemporary Psychology: The Apa Review Of Books )

This book offers a wise, often inspired, guide to the treatment of patients who present with eating disorders and other addictive behavior. Any clinician can learn from this inside view of the demands that working with this difficult group of patients places on their therapists. And the book is more, because taken together the chapters constitute a discourse on fundamental questions about human desire and will, and about our need to live authentically and creatively. I recommend it highly to everyone interested in treating eating disordered patients and to everyone who wants to understand the thinking of contemporary relationally oriented psychoanalysts and psychotherapists. (Jay Greenberg, Ph.D. )

About the Author

Jean Petrucelli, Ph.D., F.P.P.R., is co-founder and co-director of Eating Disorders and Substance Abuse Service, and is supervisor of psychotherapy, teaching faculty, William Alanson White Institute.

Catherine Stuart, Ph.D., is co-founder and co-director of Eating Disorders and Substance Abuse Service, and supervising analyst, teaching faculty, William Alanson White Institute. Dr. Stuart is also on faculty at the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 22 and up
  
• Hardcover: 392 pages
• Publisher: Jason Aronson, Inc. (November 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765703181
• ISBN-13: 978-0765703187
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #479,871 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hungers and Compulsions: something to chew on!, August 13, 2002

By 

Marie Delgado Travis "Poetexx" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hungers and Compulsions: The Psychodynamic Treatment of Eating Disorders and Addictions (Hardcover)

Hungers and Compulsions, co-edited by Jean Petrucelli, Ph.D. and Catherine Stuart, Ph.D. is an ambitious, thought-provoking and perhaps even life-altering, collection of scholarly writings by various experts on "addiction" in the broadest sense of the term.

While the book is targeted primarily at professionals in the fields of psychology/psychiatry, etc., as a lay person, I find myself reading it "compulsively" (if you'll excuse the pun), since it offers fascinating insights into areas which may touch our lives or the lives of those we know -- hunger disorders, cigarette smoking, alcoholism and drug addiction, etc.

The book also explores the patient-therapist relationship, from unique vantage points: often that of the therapist and his or her own needs or the analysis of a literary character's behavior.

If you are looking for substantive summer reading, I think you'll find it dulce et utile. After reading the first few chapters, I was shocked to find myself in the exercise room for the first time in my life! Perhaps it was the image of the coughing cigarette smoker or the patient who yanked and ate her hair. Hopefully, it will inspire others towards positive change, as well.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Illuminating!, August 27, 2002

By 

toni (Tucson, Arizona United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hungers and Compulsions: The Psychodynamic Treatment of Eating Disorders and Addictions (Hardcover)

This book is fascinating. I was delighted that - although I am not a psychoanalyst - the book is written with such clarity that I could easily understand its complex psychological concepts.

I was attracted to the book because I am a writer and it contains a section about creativity and addiction which I found extraordinarily insightful.

This book makes excellent reading and is also a useful tool for self-examination.