Arts Therapies and Clients with Eating Disorders

Ditty Dokter is senior lecturer in dramatherapy at the School of Art and Design, University of Hertfordshire and Dramatherapist Senior 1, Professorial Unit, Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge

• Introduction. 1. `Fragile board'; arts therapies in the treatment of clients suffering from eating disorders, Ditty Dokter 2. `Anger is red'; a user's account, Elise Warriner. Art Therapy 3. The picture as transactional object in the treatment of anorexia, Joy Schaverien 4. `Bringing the man into the room'; art therapy groupwork with women with compulsive eating problems, Mary Jayne Rust. 5. The mental double trap of the anorexic patient: the use of art therapy techniques to facilitate psychic change, Paola Luzzatto. 6. `The power of food': some explorations and transcultural experiences in relation to eating disorders, Diane Waller Dramatherapy 7. A Dramatherapy case history: an anorectic response to an incomplete `rite of passage' Sue Jennings. 8. Dramatherapy in short-term groupwork with women with bulimia, Maggie Young. 9. The use of dramatherapy in the treatment of eating disorders: a developing Dutch method, Astrid Jacobse. 10. Experiential training for staff working with eating disorders, Linda Winn. Psychodrama 11. Psychodrama with eating disordered patients. The use of concrete metaphors for the body, Mary Levens.12. The use of psychodrama in the field of bulimia, Sandra Jay Dance Movement Therapy 13. A new way of working with body image in therapy, incorporating dance movement therapy methodology, Sally Totenbier. 14. Eating distress, women and integrative movement psychotherapy, Helen Payne. Music Therapy 15. Towards autonomy and a sense of self: music therapy and the individuation process in relation to children and adolescents with early onset anorexia nervosa, Jacqueline Robarts. 16. Individual music therapy with anorexic and bulimic patients, Ann Sloboda. 17. Sexual abuse and eating disorders: a possible connection indicated through music therapy?, Penny Rogers. 18. The development of symbolic function in a young woman with Down's syndrome, Margaret Heal The Contributors. Index.

Dick Blackwell's preface and Ditty Dokter's introduction provide an excellent summary of the book's overall message - the necessity to communicate with those who have no words for their suffering. Although we use words to describe what art therapy does, we cannot hope to achieve that communication without reaching beyond words through art. I wholeheartedly recommend this book to students and practitioners of all helping services, particularly the arts therapies. It enables us to reach beyond the boundaries of our lives, and to appreciate the many ways in which we might break through the limits of our cultural assumptions.