What is that which gleams through me and smites my heart without wounding it? I am both a-shudder and a-glow. St. Augustine It is wonder and awe that I feel in view of the individual's power to create self-therapeutic devices. This book is the saga of these young in dividuals, who change and recreate the shape and dimensions of their bodies in a quest to achieve and finally demonstrate autonomy. Ironically, it seems that they can go on living thanks to their exces sive behavior, their hunger, and their deviances. They exhibit an ex treme polarity, an "either-or": the thrill of excesses, the...

We do not think about everything at once all the time. Various mecha nisms allow us to choose from among the themes, issues, topics, feelings, ideas, and memories that might occupy consciousness. One can focus selectively on anything deemed important; yet the methods by which this is accomplished vary greatly. We clinicians assign to these various mech anisms names that fit whatever theoretical system is central to our work-the healthy suppression of "background noise" allows us to pay attention to certain matters; the repression of unconscious conflict may assist our functioning in one...