Dynamic psychiatry and the treatment of anorexia psychosis.

Abstract

Dynamic psychotherapy of psychosis works through gradually diminishing terror, replacing this with a clearer and shared understanding of the patient's life history, its traumas and its strengths. It is diametrically opposed to our current push for efficiency and an assumption of an underlying brain disorder that responds to our current medications. Over the course of a long treatment, this patient became a scholar of psychoanalytic contributions to understanding psychosis and is now a philosopher of this field, developing an understanding of anorexia psychosis. She draws on the writings of Freud, Bion, Lacan, and Julian Jaynes, placing the core of psychosis not in primary process but in a preceding, non-self phase of development. She relates this individual development to the history of human development.