An article written with Lisa Fellin on the dynamics of power in therapy with anorexics and bulimics. It is pubblished in the latest issue of the Italin journal Family therapy. It contains the synthesis of an entire therapy that exemplifies a therapeutic strategy that I devised and that I have been using for twenty years with eating disorders and also with other disorders.An article written with Lisa Fellin on the dynamics of power in therapy with anorexics and bulimics. It is pubblished in the latest issue of the Italin journal Family therapy. It contains the synthesis of an entire therapy that exemplifies a therapeutic strategy that I devised and that I have been using for twenty years with eating disorders and also with other disorders.
Valeria Ugazio & Lisa Chiara Fellin (2022) Le dinamiche di potere nella terapia con anoressiche e bulimiche: da vincolo a risorsa? [The power dynamics in the therapy with anorexia and bulimia.] Terapia Familiare, 128, 31-54.
Why does family therapy for anorexias and bulimias continue to be an elitist treatment in many countries despite its blatant and documented successes with these psychopathologies? Who is responsible? The health organizations or the families of these patients? And above all, is it possible to develop therapeutic strategies that, while not renouncing the basic principles of the systemic perspective, favor the collaboration of families as well as anorexic and bulimic patients?In this article we give answers to these questions by presenting the therapeutic strategy that I called "alternate planned paths" and by exemplifying it through a clinical case of which the entire therapeutic path is summarized. I have described more extensively elsewhere (Ugazio, 2019), this strategy which is inspired by the theory of familiar semantic polarities (Ugazio, 1998; 2012; 2018). Its goal is to overcome some of the most frequent difficulties that hinder classical family therapy with eating disorders and with which I have often encountered.
