Unpacking Packing while Being Lost in Lace

Abstract

Clothes, as a primary means of self-representation, are statements to the world and expressions of the self that reveal and conceal: they can be an expression of love or hatred of the self, or by the self to others. The body and the clothing it wears are the venues in which affective experience is most obviously and concretely expressed to the world at large. The complexity and context-dependent nature of clothing choice, within the cultural landscape and in our psychic inner self-states, can wax and wane with our conscious and unconscious feelings. The experience, difficulties or trauma people have with packing clothes highlights symbolically how desire, wanting, and the uncertainty of possibilities play out through one’s choice and use of clothes and is illustrated by a clinical case.

Keywords:

• clothes
• packing
• self-states
• body-states
• dissociation.

Notes

¹ For a longer version of this case, please see the chapter entitled “Shopping Addiction” (authors, R. Rieppi & J. Petrucelli) in the book Beyond the Primal Addiction, (Eds.) Savelle-Rocklin, N. & Akhtar, S., Routledge, London & New York, 2019.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jean Petrucelli

Jean Petrucelli, PhD is a Training & Supervising Analyst, Director and Co-Founder of the Eating Disorders, Compulsions and Addictions Service (EDCAS); Conference Advisory Board (CAB) Committee Chair; and Founding Director of the EDCAS one-year educational certificate program at The William Alanson White Institute for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. She is an Adjunct Clinical Professor for New York University’s Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis; Adjunct Faculty, Institute of Contemporary Psychology; Associate Editor for Contemporary Psychoanalysis; and editor of five books, including winner of the American Board and Academy of Psychoanalysis (ABAPsa) 2016 Edited Book, Body-States: Interpersonal and Relational Perspectives on the Treatment of Eating Disorders (Routledge, 2015). Dr. Petrucelli specializes in the interpersonal treatment of eating disorders and addictions, lectures nationally and internationally, and is in private practice in New York City.