To Eat, or Not to Eat? A Psychoanalytic View on the Food-Parent

Research shows eating disorders increase the mortality rate: anorexia nervosa has the highest mortality rate and yet an accurate morbidity rate of bulimia nervosa remains hidden. However, research on the endopsychic structural dynamics that perpetuate in patients with eating disorders is scant. This essay depicts the use of Fairbairn’s theory of endopsychic personality structure in understanding anorexia nervosa, binge eating disorder and bulimia nervosa. Fairbairn, of the independent group of British object relations theorists, provides a picture of the endopsychic structure based on the conscious and unconscious psychodynamics between partial ego/part-object dyads. Using three case histories, the following pages illustrate the incessantly present endopsychic permutations of the aforementioned dynamics and the possibility of the entrapment in one of these or swinging from one to the other in eating disorders. The essay also shows that early traumatic experiences are present in the case history of individuals with any one of these eating disorders and despite their manifested behavioural differences, they result from the widening of fissures in the universal split in the psyche due to emotional and/or physical abuse. Finally, using Fairbairn’s theory, the analysis in the essay explains the comorbidity of certain eating disorders and borderline personality structure.