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Our métier as psychoanalysts is to read lives backward. In this book, we have a rich opportunity to read lives forward, and see ailments develop.
Sylvia Brody has written a book about two children, now young women, followed from birth as part of a study of “normal” volunteers. This study has produced four books, including the present one, following the girls from birth to the age of eighteen. The developmental study began in 1964 with 131 mothers and infants and was designed to determine the impact of maternal feeding on development. Brody developed observable criteria for maternal caregiving, clustered into categories of empathy, efficiency, and competence. She also examined the relative importance of feeding, holding, and proximity in infants' development. What began as a one-year study was re-funded for follow-ups at three, four, five, six, and seven years, and then eighteen, with developmental assessments and home and school visits. Belatedly, some fathers were included. Unfortunately, Brody's early methodology preceded Ainsworth's maternal sensitivity and attachment measures, which would have lent greater robustness to the results. Nevertheless, we are grateful for the detailed observations of these two girls who in adolescence developed eating disorders.
Thomä (1967) followed anorexics for several decades following the onset of overt symptoms. Phenomenologically, they did poorly, although the symptoms varied. Some remained eating-disordered (some developing obesity), while others developed personality disorders or fell into substance abuse—conditions with grim prospects under earlier treatment regimes. We must learn more about the early factors leading to eating disorders, a Moloch that consumes its subjects, that we may treat these women more effectively and liberate them.
Brody turns the telescope backward in time, showing us what infancy and childhood were like before the eruption of eating disorder symptoms at puberty. Read this book for the following details