Fat Lady by Irvin Yalom

We used this chapter from ‘Love’s Executioner’ to consider out personal responses to obesity. While we had varied experience of obesity in clients, we agreed that it is vital to find a way to talk about it. We acknowledged that it may take courage to broach such a potentially sensitive aspect of a client’s body image but that it was imperative to create  the space to  explore it.

A member of F and D with professional experience of disordered eating pointed out that many overweight people are blind to their size. She thought there would invariably be a reason for a person’s weight to be out of control and therapy is an opportunity to try and find the reason. Emotional emptiness seemed to be a common feature .

We considered the effect of gender on our responses to obesity and decided that social and cultural expectations were harsher on women than men.

“Real” differences between twins and identity development

 

 

The groupm meeting on June 6th 2018, discussed a chapter entitled “ “real” differences between twins and identity development” from Barbara Klein’s book on twins in therapy: “Alone in the Mirror” (Routledge,2012).

 

This chapter raised a number of interesting issues for our work as therapists:

 

• Who mirrors the twin as the twin is often not looking at mother but at their twin and what is the impact of this? (i.e. the essential formative relationship is with the twin rather than the mother)

 

• What is the effect of shared experience in the womb, particularly if one twin dies in utero?

 

 

• Effect of a merged and dependent relationship with the other twin as in the clinical example of Chuck

 

• The effect of twins being seen as a unit by the parents rather than as separate individuals

 

 

• Impact of a twin’s expectation of others that their feelings and thoughts will be known and understood without the need to express them due to the shared communication with their twin as the imprint

We agreed that the book was thought-provoking and merited further reading and one of the group has already recommended it to a client who is a twin which is sufficient validation!

 

Rosemary pitt

28/6/18