Am J Psychiatry 1978; 135:547-551
Copyright © 1978 by American Psychiatric Association
Obesity and psychoanalysis
C Rand and AJ Stunkard
Seventy-two psychoanalysts collected information on 84 obese patients and
on a control sample of 63 of their patients of normal weight. Despite the
fact that obesity was the chief complaint of only 6% of the obese patients,
weight losses at 42 months of psychoanalytic treatment compared favorably
with those after traditional medical efforts: 47% of the obese
psychoanalytic patients lost more than 9 kg, and 19% lost more than 18 kg.
There was also a striking decrease in the percentage of obese patients
suffering from body image disparagement--from 44% to 12%, an unexpectedly
good result for this chronic and intractable disorder.
