I don’t mind sharing a depth formula for anorexia nervosa. This is the “lean and mean” version that leaves out the wide if not infinite palette of character and circumstance idiosyncrasy. The common concomitant of “anxiety” is also given short shrift as it is a consequence of the primary loss.
(a) There is a quality of deficit of love for this child. She is often invisible while a sibling is highly visible and focused on by the parents. (b) Food, which feels nurturing, strikes her feelings as a sorry substitute for the nurturant love she should be getting but isn’t. (c) It is too painful to enjoy this failed substitute, so she must reject it. To move on developmentally in life, which is another good that is nestled in nurturance, is likely to be aborted. Hence her two-dimensional quality and dearth of ideas in her therapy.
As is true of so much childhood dysfunction, her mind turns her prison into her haven. The identity of being especially thin, starved, and being individuated from her parents, is her pride. She may be lively, now having an identity.
I attended a short webinar on eating disorders today. Short shrift was given to parents’
part in the equation. A generic smorgasbord of theories was named, nothing to
do with a love deficit. Unfortunately, that is to be expected. The world of people doesn’t want to feel what it never
got in childhood, and what it can’t give in parenthood. This is the ultimate “problem
that has no name.”**
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* https://pessimisticshrink.blogspot.com/2021/06/anorexia-in-one-lesson.html
** https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.100.9.1582. Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique
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Comments are welcome, but I'd suggest you first read "Feeling-centered therapy" and "Ocean and boat" for a basic introduction to my kind of theory and therapy.