Anorexia nervosa generates considerable interest in medical and psychiatric circles but investigations of it from the point of view of unconscious mechanisms and object relations have been fewer than one would expect, given the frequency of the disorder. Fear of Being Fat is an important contribution to an understanding of the psychodynamics of anorexia and bulimia, which the authors see as two sides of the same coin. They consider these eating disorders as emotionally caused and psychoanalysis and psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy as the treatments of choice.

The book is edited by Philip Wilson who contributes four chapters to it. The other two principal authors, Charles Hogan and Ira Mintz,