Eating Disorders: Empathy, Alexithymia, Reflective Function

Eating disorders are often understood through a medical or behavioral lens, focusing on symptom reduction. But what if we’ve overlooked something deeper-something rooted in the complex emotional lives of our patients? In this episode, Dr. Tom Wooldridge, a psychoanalyst and expert in eating disorders, joins Dr. David Puder to explore the psychoanalytic perspective on treating these conditions.
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[@dimitrinapashova2857]

Thank you, very useful!

[@veronicaortizcandelaria8729]

¡Gracias! Interesante episodio.

[@SallyVanderwiel]

Great episode, but curious about Dr Puder’s surprise re: efficacy of psychodynamically oriented therapy for eating disorders. As in the treatment of all other mental health conditions, this modality has always been effective if clinicians are skilled, gentle and compassionate, as it is oriented in the relational and developmental realm, focussing on the functional aspects of the conditions and giving voice to those undigestable feelings that are buried. For some reason eating disorder patients get the manualised treatments more due to the physical aspects of the conditions, and the strange ‘one size fits all’ stance of treatment teams. So good that we are finally challenging the monopoly FBT has in the eating disorder treatment mileau.

[@SylviabombsmithUjhy75bd34]

First! (Shelder would be proud)
• 5:30 “don’t want to get lost in clinical work” - Reminds me of the quote “Don’t jump into the water with the client, because you both might drown” - however I would contend you have to “splash around” in the patient’s waters a bit with them to be able to be “let in”, and extract the meanings that are significant to them (something that Wooldridge speaks about being important to successful client outcomes, opposed to simply focusing on symptom-reduction).
• 6:45 He is talking about determinism, and the process of detective work that we engage in therapy whereby we hear about the events that shaped the person into who they are today. Just as “no leaf falls randomly” (there are wind currents blowing it, as well as gravity pulling it to the ground), so too is it the case that no thought, emotion, or behaviour happens “randomly”. We just are ignorant of the causal nature of things at that proximate level.