EFTA Conversation: When family therapy is not enough: a flexible protocol for anorexia and bulimia in adolescence

With Valeria Ugazio

Chairperson: Umberta Telfener

Why is therapeutic work with families of adolescents with anorexia and bulimia so effective and, at the same time, so difficult to sustain? Is the classical model of family therapy suitable for today’s families and eating disorders? I have many doubts.  Anorexic and bulimic girls and their families today are very different from those of the 1970s and 1980s.

According to the theory of semantic polarities (Ugazio, 2013), the main obstacle to family therapy is the “semantics of power” that characterizes the conversation in these families. When the semantics of power dominate the conversation, “the therapeutic relationship is perceived as humiliating” (Ugazio, 2013; Ugazio et al., 2022). But how can these difficulties in the therapeutic relationship be overcome?

I will present and discuss with you a flexible protocol aimed at facing these difficulties and the changing characteristics of these clients (Ugazio, 2019).  An entire therapeutic process  of a clinical case will illustrate this protocol.

REFERENCES

Ugazio V. (2019). Anorexic girls and their families: how can we deal with their semantic and its dilemmas? Psychotherapy Review,63, pp. 10- 23.

Ugazio, V. (2013). Family Semantic Polarities and psychopathology in the Family. Permitted and Forbidden Stories. New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780203552384

Ugazio, V., Guarnieri, S., Anselmi,P., Castelli D. & Pandolfi, M. (2022). The therapeutic relationship with clients with phobic, obsessive–compulsive, eating, and depressive disorders: which meanings prevail?, Journal of Constructivist Psychology,  35:1, 360-387.

Valeria Ugazio, Ph.D (www.valeriaugazio.com), director of the European Institute of Systemic-relational Therapies (EIST) (www.eist.it) and full professor of clinical psychology,  took part in the “Milan Approach” and taught   in the Centro Milanese di Terapia Familiare, directed by L. Boscolo and G. Cecchin, until she founded, twenty-five years ago, the EIST in Milano where  she has been carrying out her psychotherapeutic practice, her research and training activities. She developed the family semantic polarities model set out in Semantic Polarities and Psychopathologies in the Family. Permitted and Forbidden Stories (New York: Routledge, 2013).  She is currently developing systemic therapeutic approaches specific for individuals and families facing and obsessive-compulsive disorders.
 

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