Such a history is not essential to the etiology of eating disorders, but I think it is logical as a strong contributor to such a development. This association makes sense in terms of a developmental view of the etiology of eating disorders. As to my relationships with patients, including Laura, I see myself in partnership with people who are striving to achieve inner cohesion as a basis for a satisfying life. Inevitably, they react to me according to their previous experiences with others. I am not different from all of those others necessarily because of a superior capacity for loving nor any ability to understand them at times.
Patients can feel their control of the contract through paying a fee.
To be a maximally effective partner in such an enterprise for them, however, if I try to keep professional boundaries. I am committed to protecting them from feeling swooped up into my orbit, as their previous experiences with significant others may have left them feeling. The idea of a therapist as one who supplies from the outside what the patient still lacks is a way of seeing people from the standpoint of a deficit model. I prefer to question why the person is not free to use the potential for self-desired constructive behavior that each of us actually possesses. I have never met a person who does not demonstrate the full range of human possibilities at various times.