The analysis of a young anorexic woman illustrates the core dynamic of "a relentless unconscious attempt to restore the lost union with the internalized feeding mother while avoiding the terror of merging and loss of boundaries." The paper is noteworthy for its rich descriptive detail of anorexic character pathology and for the author's significant empiric finding in several cases of a particular kind of relationship between the anorexic girl and her father. "He had either taken over the mothering at a point when individuation had not yet taken place or his tie to the patient from a very early age had the quality of symbiotic mothering related to his own unconscious needs."