[Change in self-object differentiation in an eating disordered patient during inpatient therapy]

This paper is intended as a contribution to qualitative-quantitative research on the psychotherapeutic process. It reports on the course of a three-month inpatient psychosomatic treatment of a female patient with an eating disorder from the preferred point of view of psychoanalytically oriented individual therapy. Given the central role of the self-object relationship in women with eating disorders, changes that occur with regard to this aspect over the course of the therapy are recorded and described. In addition to the clinical perspective, the selected approach is based on a combination of methods, with an emphasis on the analysis of linguistic content using the Gottschalk-Gleser method, the Core Conflictual Relationship Theme method according to Luborsky and the projective procedure of Object Relations Technique according to Phillipson. In the course of treatment reveals changes in terms of reducing shame-anxiety and inwardly-directed aggressiveness as well as in the patient's object repproachement and to a more positive way of dealing with herself, all of which, on the whole, can be considered indicative of an increasing degree of self-object differentiation.