The disappearing body: anorexia as a conflict of embodiment (original) (raw)
Related papers
Anorexia Nervosa and the Body Uncanny: A Phenomenological Approach
Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology
Anorexia nervosa is a disorder that is closely related to questions of self-hood and social roles. The pursuit of excessive thinness is part of a search for identity in which the control of the body—its size and needs—becomes central. This need for control seems to be triggered by a state of bodily alienation in which the body is perceived to be foreign and horrifying to its bearer. The relentless dieting and excessive exercise pursued by the anorexic person eventually leads to a state of starvation in which the relationship of control between the person and her body becomes reversed: the body now controls the thoughts, feelings, and actions of the anorexic person in an uncanny and life-threatening way. In this paper, an attempt is made to better understand the ways in which the body becomes alien in anorexia nervosa by way of a phenomenological analysis. The analysis is exemplified and supported by stories told by girls suffering from the illness. The aim of the paper is to show that anorexia nervosa is neither a bodily dysfunction, nor a cultural product, only. Rather, the disorder is best understood as an illness in which the autonomous nature of one's own body becomes overwhelming in a fatal and characteristic way. The different ways of becoming bodily alienated interact in anorexia in establishing an uncanniness of the body that is both conspicuous—to people around the ill person—and hard to escape—for the person herself. keywords: lived body, alien body, phenomenology of illness, phenomenology of psychiatry, living with anorexia.
Controlling the noise: A phenomenological account of Anorexia Nervosa and the threatening body
Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology , 2021
Anorexia Nervosa (AN) is a complex disorder characterised by self-starvation, an act of self-destruction. It is often described as a disorder marked by paradoxes and, despite extensive research attention, is still not well understood. Much AN research focuses upon the distorted body image that individuals with AN supposedly experience. However, based upon reports from individuals describing their own experience of AN, I argue that their bodily experience is much more complex than this focus might lead us to believe. Such research often presents an overly cognitive understanding of bodily experience in AN, underplaying the affective, felt experience of individuals with AN, as well as descriptions of empowerment, strength and control reported in the early stages of AN. This paper seeks to enrich our understanding of bodily experience in AN as it progresses throughout the various stages of the disorder. I show how the classical phenomenological distinction between the body-as-subject and the body-as-object, as well as Leder's conception of the visceral body, can inform our understanding of bodily experience in AN. I suggest that the project of self-starvation is an attempt to overcome the noisy demands of the visceral body, which are experienced as threatening the body-as-subject, through a process of objectifying the body-as-object. By cashing out AN as a project of radical bodily control that, tragically, comes to control the individual, we can capture important aspects of the bodily experience of AN and the temporal progression of the disorder.
The Body as a Selfing Device: The Case of Anorexia Nervosa
SAGE Publications Ltd eBooks, 2014
Psychology's conceptualization of anorexia nervosa illustrates how the discipline deals with the body. On the one hand, there is an emphasis on the body as a physiological apparatus. On the other hand, specific approaches such as social constructionism stress the nonphysiological body as something to which certain discursive meanings get attached. We propose to view the body as a producer of meaning in its own right, as a 'selfing device'. To this end we emphasize bodily communication as a continuous flow of co-regulated interaction. The body presents itself as the natural juncture of 'co-regulative skills'. The 'selfing process' involves multiple stylized bodily skills that testify to people's ability to take part in the life-world. Anorexia is seen as a disturbance of those skills.
Merand, 2022
Our research focuses on analysing the relationship between normality and pathology in light of an eating disorder: anorexia nervosa. Our aim is twofold: achieving a better understanding of anorexia nervosa, whilst also assessing how this clearer view can help us grasp what constitutes a normal healthy relationship to one’s body. Does normality differ in degree or in essence from this psychopathological condition? Can normality be extrapolated from the patient’s previous experience before the onset of anorexia? Can it be found in the social norm outside of the patient? We argue that the criterion of normality can only emerge and emanate from the heart of the pathological experience and its subsequent recovery. We were therefore compelled to focus our study on a definition of the latter two. Our research includes a conceptual definition of anorexia nervosa as an alienated by-product of subjectivity within the determined sociological context of modern individualism. We base our study on the findings of Dorothée Legrand who, starting from the phenomenological notion of “bodily self-consciousness”, reaches a vision of anorexia nervosa as a rupture of the typical relationship between the ‘‘body-as-subject’’ (the body perceived from the inside) and the ‘‘body-as-object’’ (the body perceived and targeted from the outside, as sharing its existence with other external objects). According to this definition, an anorexic patient seeks to transform, in a controlled fashion, her own object-body in order to turn it into a material expression of her subjectivity. Paradoxically, losing weight and becoming thin, even to the point of reaching a negation of the object-body, are inherent parts of the process insofar as they contribute to expressing and consolidating the patient’s subjectivity. The anorexic patient’s self-affirmation is achieved through the controlled modification of her object-body: she uses her objective dimension as a mirror of her own subjectivity. She is then able, from that exteriorised controlled manifestation, to seek self-recognition from others. The fact that the awareness of the subject-body is too weak in an anorexic patient, as opposed to an overpowering object-body, leads her into trying to control the object-body in an attempt to turn it into an external prop for expressing her inner self, and thus bearing witness to her own existence. This allows us to understand anorexia nervosa in a Hegelian perspective: the anorexic patient works on her body, so as to stamp it with the seal of her own inner self, determined by her own conscience. This enables her to escape the estrangement of her own raw material body and allows her to inhabit a body she recognises as her own; the workings on her body will also allow her to achieve self-recognition from others. However, this definition does not cover the full extent of anorexia nervosa. In our opinion, anorexia nervosa appears to be a partly addictive strategy through which the patient attempts to become a socially integrated individual, whilst avoiding a true expression of her inner subjective “self”. We think that the anorexic patient’s notion of self is opaque and ill-defined, hence hard to exteriorize within the object-body. Indeed, how could she express something she does not fully grasp (or maybe, rather, « experience »)? We suggest that anorexia nervosa stems from a fundamental anxiety: that of an undetermined subjectivity, due notably to a predominance of alexithymia in the personality. Interestingly, this lack of subjective self-awareness coexists in our modern western society with a pressure, keenly felt by perfectionist anorexics, to be “someone”, i.e., to become an accomplished individual and be granted social recognition as such. Lastly, as revealed by Hilde Bruche’s work, anorexic people intrinsically suffer from a feeling of “inefficiency”, which makes them convinced they are not really capable of leading autonomous lives and to have a positive impact on the outside world despite their efforts. Achieving thinness therefore brings three outcomes: (a) it provides a substitute identity (a kind of “fake self”) to the anorexic person unable to find out who she is, (b) it allows them, through this substituted identity, to appear like a highly performing individual, admired by others for their self-discipline and high achievement, (c) it allows an immediate relationship to their body and provides an escape from other personal achievement demands, such as work, which confront them with an external reality potentially uncontrollable and unpredictable. On the opposite, the body is perceived as ultimately self-controlled. Our analyses lead to an understanding of the key stages of recovery, which depend on the patient gaining real autonomy. This autonomy can only be achieved firstly through a capacity by the patient to identify and understand her own inner emotions and develop an immanent “self” awareness, no longer dependent on external parameters, and secondly through an ability to understand signals inherent to her own body and achieve a body shape adapted to the body itself. When the body is no longer forced to be the symbol of a subjectivity based on a weak or non-existent self-awareness (alexithymia), it can then fulfill its own individual norms. This is the criterion of a healthy and normal relationship to one’s body. Thus, a pathological state is that of a body being used as physical proof and compensation for a subjectivity experienced as non-existent and ill defined; whereas a healthy relationship to one’s body is one which follows its own needs, freed from the coercion to be the externalised marker of a subjective state of confusion.
The Unbearable Heaviness of Being: Pain and Suffering in Anorexia
The Open Pain Journal, 2014
In anorexia which classically shows the difficulty in adolescence to link bodily transformations and sexuality, psychic suffering is undeniable and is embodied in the body while taking into account contemporary social data. Building on some elements of the psychoanalysis of a young anorexic girl, the article attempts to break through the wall of pain and get to perceive that in an order that is no longer governed by the paternal instance, which allows the representation, the subject can no longer support a phallusized image and the body is reduced to its reality. This results in a particularly painful female transmission in the clinic of anorexia, in which the contemporary world is not innocent. Pain is not the goal for the anorexic; it shows a willingness to feel the existence of the body. She seeks this nothing through which she attempts to capture the rift in the Other. But to achieve this nothing she must feel the pain of its absence. Pain is thus a claimed effect. The article e...
Body Poly-texts: Discourses of the Anorexic Body
Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 1996
It is now increasingly acknowledged that anorexia nervosa is a 'culture-bound syndrome' which must be understood within the context of an increasing idealization of female thinness and a high prevalence of dieting and body dissatisfaction, particularly amongst women and girls. Whilst this socioculturally-oriented perspective is important, it is also simplistic to conceptualize anorexia simply as a 'slimmer's disease'. The ways in which contemporary Western culture is imbricated in anorexia are both complex and multiple. This paper uses a discourse-analytic approach, informed by feminist Foucauldian theory, to examine some of the multiple and often conflicting meanings and discursive constructions of the (female) anorexic body. The paper is based on a series of interviews conducted with 23 women (21 diagnosed as anorexic and 2 self-diagnosed). The analysis focuses on the explication of two discourses: a romantic discourse and a discourse of Cartesian dualism evidenced in the interviews. By contrasting the very different ways in which these two discourses constitute the anorexic body, this paper aims to provide thereby a socioculturally contextualized and genderoriented account of the multiple discursive constructions of 'anorexia nervosa' and 'anorexic' bodies. Implications for psychotherapeutic interventions are discussed.
Open Access The Unbearable Heaviness of Being: Pain and Suffering in Anorexia
2016
Abstract: In anorexia which classically shows the difficulty in adolescence to link bodily transformations and sexuality, psychic suffering is undeniable and is embodied in the body while taking into account contemporary social data. Building on some elements of the psychoanalysis of a young anorexic girl, the article attempts to break through the wall of pain and get to perceive that in an order that is no longer governed by the paternal instance, which allows the representation, the subject can no longer support a phallusized image and the body is reduced to its reality. This results in a particularly painful female transmission in the clinic of anorexia, in which the contemporary world is not innocent. Pain is not the goal for the anorexic; it shows a willingness to feel the existence of the body. She seeks this nothing through which she attempts to capture the rift in the Other. But to achieve this nothing she must feel the pain of its absence. Pain is thus a claimed effect. The...
The Phenomenology of Anorexia Nervosa: The Intertwining Meaning of Gender and Embodiment
The European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences, 2015
Eating disorders affect 5-10 million females, triple the rates of people living with AIDS or schizophrenia. Traditional research acknowledged interconnecting factors in developing anorexia nervosa, yet few studies attempted to examine the meaning of gender and embodiment from the anorexic woman's unique perspective. Thus, this study attempts to describe and illuminate this rift in the literature regarding intertwining regions of gender, embodiment, and the presence of anorexia nervosa. Data were obtained from a mixed-methods approach, with interview reports of subjects' life experiences and the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI). Female participants (N = 6) between 19 and 29 years old were interviewed in conformity with commonly accepted phenomenological data collection procedures. Results show the meaning of gender and embodiment in the experience of being a woman with anorexia is characterized by events that cause a downward spiral into hopelessness, depression, and negative self-esteem. The study identified no correlation between BSRI and the presence of anorexia, but revealed seven themes:
The Entropic Body: Primitive Anxieties and Secondary Skin Formation in Anorexia Nervosa
This paper develops a metapsychological view of anorexia nervosa, including not only its symptomatic presentation, but also its etiology and characteristic psychic and relational styles. Because patients with anorexia are understood as not having internalized maternal comforting functions in the period of separation-individuation, they are unable to digest trauma experiences of infancy. I will argue that the anorexic patient’s disturbed relationship with food reflects distortions in transitional object usage. Lacking the ability to contain intense anxieties about disintegration and falling apart, patients with anorexia must find other ways to hold themselves together. The fear of getting fat expressed by these patients is one way that this fear of disintegration is expressed. Furthermore, the almost addictive experience of emaciation holds the personality together. Elaborating this idea, I develop the notion of the entropic body, a particular version of the false body (Goldberg, 2004) employed by patients with anorexia nervosa in an attempt to compensate for absent maternal comforting functions. This body-state (Petrucelli, 2014), which develops against a background of profound early trauma, eschews hunger and dependence in favor of omnipotently controlled protection.
Anorexia and Adolescence a delusion embedded in the body
Anorexia nervosa is, unfortunately, a very difficult test bed for the psychotherapist: it is in every way a borderline syndrome, in other words, a form between the psychosis (the rupture of the reality principle, the absence of the consciousness of the illness) and the neurosis. Since the young anorexic is substantially phantasmatically closed in her maternal-foetal involucre, above all, the contact and the opening phases are a difficult task, which requires experience, neutrality and patient waiting by the therapist: every attempt to force the situation, will be lived by the patient as a repetition of an englobing threat which endangers her untouchable Uniqueness.