This article examines some of the dynamics of eating disorders in adolescence and some relevant aspects of treatment. In particular, with the aid of some clinical vignettes, the author analyzes strategies that can help patient and therapist to access the unconscious dimensions of experience, building a sense for what was originally experienced as mechanical and repetitive nonsense.

With the help of the most recent contributions from the psychoanalytic literature, mainly from a constructivistic and relational purview, the author analyzes some ambiguous dimensions of the therapeutic relationship related to seduction, love, and power. It is assumed that the seductive power embedded in the psychotherapeutic experience is related to the paradoxical character of the relationship between patient and therapist that is, at the same time, asymmetrical and mutual. The role played by gender differences in the expression of love and seduction between patient and therapist is also discussed. A final reflection is dedicated to the potential and space that transactional analysis theory, from its origins to date, provides to these obscure and elusive dimensions of the therapeutic relationship.

In this article the author examines the recognized meaning of defense mechanisms in transactional analysis theory. In particular, it stresses that in Berne's model and its later developments, clinical attention has focused primarily on the consequences produced by defense mechanisms, while analysis of the intrapsychic processes implied in the manifestation of a defensive behavior remains marginal. A possible explanation for this is suggested with reference to Berne's theory of ego states, and the clinical implications of this orientation of Berne's theory are considered.

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The author examines the tensions present in every psychotherapy between the contract, on the one hand, and the illusions of the patient and therapist, on the other. She considers these as two of the various polarities through which the psychotherapeutic process develops with its intrinsic ambiguities. The role Berne assigned to illusion and disillusionment in life and in every psychotherapeutic process is compared with the various functions of illusion discussed by Winnicott and psychoanalysts of the British School. Considering the contract and illusions in a dialectic relationship, the author reflects on the clinical implications of the transactional analysis theory of contracts; discusses recent transactional analytic viewpoints, mainly from a relational perspective, that widen the clinical prospects of psychological contracts; and considers the possible implicit and dynamic influences of these developments. She also examines some specific illusions of patients and therapists and considers their implicit links with clinical models common to various psychotherapeutic theories.