Mar 23, 2024: Faculty in the News – Tom Wooldridge

Episode Description: We begin with a description of the common contertransferential pull to behaviorally intervene when faced with repetitive self-destructive eating disorder symptoms. This intention can inform but not compel the clinical decision about the treatment of choice for someone at any particular moment in their care. These approaches do not, however, give an individual access to their interoceptive life from which these disturbing self-preoccupations emerge. We discuss the challenges of working with those who have limited capacities for mentalisation and as a result, live out their inner lives somatically and motorically. Immersive treatment leads the clinician to experience these proto-affects in one’s own body and in one’s own ruminations. Tom discusses alexithymia, typical family structures, and the presence of the ‘abject’ in the lives of these patients. He presents a case of a patient who was able to analytically work through both the early struggles and later neurotic aspects of these conflicts. We close with his sharing with us his vision for the future which includes more integration between the dynamic and adynamic approaches to these challenging patients.

Listen to the Episode: The Dynamic Underpinnings of the Eating Disorders with Tom Wooldridge, PsyD (San Francisco)