THE SUBJUGATION OF THE BODY IN EATING DISORDERS

A Particularly Female Solution

Sands, Susan H. PhD

¹Faculty, Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California.

²Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Susan H. Sands, PhD, 1664 Solano Avenue, Berkeley, California 94707. E-mail: [email protected].

An earlier version of this article was presented at the 23rd Annual International Conference on the Psychology of the Self, Chicago, November 12, 2000.

Psychoanalytic Psychology 20(1):p 103-116, Winter 2003.

Object relations theorists have explained the ruthless control of the body seen in eating disorders as an attempt to dominate the bad maternal object. It is more useful clinically to view it as an attempt to subjugate one's needy self experience. The patient's vehement denial of need makes it much more difficult to develop a self-object transference. The split between needing and not needing in the patient's subjectivity is reciprocally related to a specific split in the therapist's subjectivity between worry and neglect. Many more women than men develop eating disorders because women are more likely to use their bodies to contain their disavowed, intolerable need states, whereas men are more likely to experience the Other in this way.