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September 10, 2003. I have admired Sylva Brody's work for years, feel privileged to have been asked to continue the thirty-year follow-up, and read her latest book with deep interest and knowledge of at least one of the two subjects. I take full responsibility for what I wrote. I tried not to reveal my strong bias for her work, as I thought that that would undermine the credibility of the review. My review could have been brief: read this important study. But I felt an obligation to recount the overall themes of the book.
Brody writes that I accept the “assumption that anorexia appears in adolescence.” To the contrary, I make two major points in the review: (1) her book suggests “a new view of anorexia nervosa as a developmental pathology” with “adverse mothering in infancy as a strain trauma” and “puberty as a secondary trauma” (p. 706), and (2) it shows anorexia to be “but the most torrid manifestation of a lifelong misery that waxes and wanes” (p. 706).
I say in my review that Brody (to my knowledge) has given us the strongest evidence that anorexia nervosa is a lifelong developmental disorder associated with adverse mothering in infancy that is perhaps more floridly manifested as “anorexia nervosa” in phenomenological terms in adolescence. This is a profound contribution. I note in my review that the prevailing belief (at least until this book) has been that anorexia nervosa is a disorder of adolescence. I do this to make the more significant comment about Brody's book.
Brody gives us evidence that an otherwise “normative event,” puberty and its psychological garb, adolescence, can serve as a traumatic experience in someone who is vulnerable because of early strain trauma (in this case, in infancy and around the mother-child interaction, including feeding). This is a major contribution.