“Ghosts at the banquet” - Scholarly Commons Home

goes on to say that, although clients can be “incapacitated by their wasted
state, or deemed treatment failures” and in need of urgent hospitalization, most
remain emotionally responsive and later are able to make a commitment to
treatment (p. 231). Strober places most emphasis on the therapist’s readiness to
create an alliance with the client and he says that this issue is rarely noted
when discussing treatment, but is crucial to the life of the client. The
approaching the illness from different perspectives means a therapist may
“bring sense to non-sense, clarity to bewilderment, tenderness and compassion
to ruthless discipline and self-abnegation” (p.231). This, Strober says, will be
viewed by the client as “medicine of extraordinary power” (p. 231). The
treatment of anorexia is time consuming and the stakes are high for which
Strober suggests, not all therapists are suited (p.231). He states a therapist
should not “undertake work for which your own nature is not well suited”
(Strober, 2004, p.254).
As a psychotherapist, I am most interested in how the client responds during
therapy, and how we might make best use of our relationship, given the
presenting issues. The therapy setting calls on the client to express herself
verbally or nonverbally. It is this therapeutic space which is therefore a re-
creation of the psychic structure, and within that an expression of her psyche
(Parsons, 1999). What is the experience of the negative (Green, 1986), the
work of negation, and what helps the client to come forward to engage in a life
promoting and sustaining relationship to self (mind/body) and to others? This
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