Correspondence: Stefanie Teitelbaum, MSW, LCSW, NCPsyA, 156 Fifth Ave, Suite 1208, New York, NY 10010. e-mail: stef.teitelbaum@gmail.com

¹Stefanie Teitelbaum, MSW, LCSW, NCPsyA, Member, Training Analyst, Supervisor, National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis (NPAP). Member, Faculty, Training Analyst, Supervisor, Institute for Expressive Analysis (IEA).

Abstract

An exploration of the use mind/body metaphors in a woman whose physical, environmental and psychoneurotic trauma culminated in an irreversible colostomy. She lived in a world of concrete symbols, her primary process damaged such that she could not create generative symbols to process her trauma. She regressed to a state of infantile megalomania, recoiling from the external reality of subjective others. Her introjective disorder mirrored her digestive disorder as she could absorb neither good objects nor good nutrients. The analytic situation has been an auxiliary fecal container and we work to bridge her mind body split with mind/body metaphors. As she reclaims lost development mastery, she displays a symbolized sphincter. As her capacity to form symbols grows, she rages and mourns for the loss of her fantasized ideal parents and her ideal body.