The analysis of the transference and counter-transference of an obese woman’s therapy leads to an understanding of the role of a traumatic pubertaire event in the constitution of a bulimic symptom during the adolescence. Dead ends imposed by this experience, a deferred action effect of the infantile, block the pacifying possibility of repression and lead to a reversal/turning round of the drive. This drive fate organizes a melancholic form of the primal scene in which the subject is guilty. It is then the body, as support of the ego and of the incorporated object that is to be attacked and protected. Force-feeding, as a centripetal movement from outside towards inside, appears as a way of opposing a fantasy of emptying and potential seduction represented by menstrual bleeding.

Adolescence, 2008, T. 26, n°4, pp. 977-989.