Positive Psychotherapy and Eating Disorders

Abstract

Eating disorders include anorexia nervosa (AN), bulimia nervosa (BN), and binge eating disorder (BED) and are categorized by positive psychotherapy (PPT after Peseschkian) among the psychosomatic disorders. In the basic model it is understood that the external behavior emerges from psychological conflicts associated with cultural and family norms of behavior and appearance. The three disorders represent different ways of coping with such conflicts. The psychotherapeutic work for eating disorders is done in the context of interprofessional interventions, starting with medical stabilization, good nutrition, and supportive therapy-both individual and group. We propose an approach to eating disorders based on humanistic, psychodynamic, and positive perspectives. During psychotherapy-using the balance model-we should provide changes in each sphere of a patient’s life: body, activities, contacts, and meaning. The therapist may incorporate the theory of three stages of interaction-fusion, differentiation, and separation-into the structuring of the sessions and the approach. The general vector of psychotherapy provides the transition from symptom to conflict through understanding of the meaning and function of the disorder-through positive interpretation-from the actual conflict to the basic one through the understanding of the dominant needs frustrated in the life situation of the client, from the basic conflict to the internal conflict through the clarification and elimination of internal dissonances arising between the concepts of the client about himself, images of attractiveness, conditions of self-acceptance, and ways of coping with problematic situations. If these conditions are met, the approach of positive psychotherapy becomes an effective way of helping the patient with eating disorders.