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This paper takes the idea of a particular individual being categorised as the scapegoat within the family - the one with the problems. The child, and it is nearly always a child, demolishes the illusion of family perfection and becomes the receptacle for anger, aggression, and conflict disowned by other family members. The idea emerges that if only it weren’t for this child, everybody would be fine.

Maroni will discuss how this process began when the patient became severely anorexic at the age of fourteen. The family started to blame the child for causing a fissure in their somewhat idealised lives that could no longer be ignored. The diagnosis of anorexia also seemed to give the patient a place to locate previously unexpressed anger, as she raged against being forced to eat.

She examines ways of working clinically with someone who is afraid of living, and paradoxically of dying, while withdrawing from the world and from anything life-giving, including food. How do you help a child who constantly refuses to be helped and attacks links in thinking? Drawing on Bion’s concept of reverie and Alvarez’s idea of reclaiming the child, Maroni explores techniques for gently drawing the anorexic patient out of the ‘claustrum’ and back to life, with all the complexity of emotion that this involves. As the patient slowly recovers from being a receptacle for others’ disturbances, another family member may then take their place as the ‘problem child’.

Speaker: Lesley Maroni

Lesley Maroni trained as a child and adolescent psychoanalytic psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic, after which she worked in the Family Unit at the Cassel Hospital. She also worked for several years in two adolescent inpatient units in London, and in a CAMHS team at Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust. She now works in private practice in London, specialising in those with eating disorders. Lesley has lectured and published widely on a range of mental health issues.

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