An Important Factor in Eating Disturbances of Childhood

Among all the problems which neurotic disturbances of children present to those who have to deal with children of an early age, eating difficulties are the most important. Mothers usually have complaints about current disturbances over eating with at least one of their children. Psychological research in the feeding problems of children, if only from the standpoint of number, is one of the most important tasks for the psychotherapist of children. The localization of these difficulties points to the oral origin of eating difficulties. We assume that the oral zone, as far as its libidinal significance is concerned, reaches from the lips to the pylorus and we find in most cases of typical psychogenic eating disturbances oral instinct elements and their elaborations. An exaggerated resistance to weaning from the mother's breast, pathological reactions to the change from liquid to mashed and solid food, persistence of thumb-sucking, are typical in the anamnesis of eating disturbances. The inhibition of oral sadism which leads to the avoidance of biting and chewing, also has to be attributed to the oral source of eating disorders.

A survey of hysterical dysfunctions of eating among adults teaches us to mistrust the assumption that only oral instinct quantities are at the basis of eating difficulties. The mere fact that hysteria, an illness originating from the genital level of development, so often shows oral symptoms, indicates that instinct quantities of origins other than oral can use oral symptomatology for their expression.. Behind the mask of orality we find intensive genital wishes, chief among which is an unconscious wish for fellatio. The defense against such wishes is expressed in the form of anorexia, dysphagia, nausea and vomiting.

Since the typical eating difficulties among children reach a climax, as a rule, before the child attains the genital phase, one