Feeding Problems of Psychogenic Origin—A Survey of the Literature

Psychogenic disorders of feeding may occur almost immediately after birth. During infancy, change, including the introduction of new foods and particularly weaning, may induce an emotional reaction against eating. The appetite of a child is affected by his emotions and by his attitude towards the person who feeds him. Excessive attempts to force food by an oversolicitous, rejecting parent may result in anorexia or dawdling, whereas the "self-selection" of foods by the child and the "self-demand schedule" for the infant minimizes difficulties. The love relationship between the mother and baby finds expression in the act of breast nursing. Later in life, eating may be regarded as a sexual act and its inhibition may result in anorexia nervosa, eating phobias and other syndromes. Marked overeating and obesity may also be caused by psychic factors. Oral sadism, often directed at a parent, may result in anorexia because eating is unconsciously equated with cannibalism. Masochistic attitudes with unconscious attempts at self-punishment and suicide may produce poor eating. The suppression of oral activities, for example thumbsucking, or of oral character traits, may cause an inhibition of eating. A displacement to the oral zone of the phenomena of another zone, particularly the anal, may produce eating disorders. In the attitude toward individual foods suggestion and associations play a role, but a frequent factor may be a symbolic significance unconsciously attributed to particular foods because of their appearance and physical properties. A fantasy of contamination may cause the rejection of food. Various possibilities of food symbolism are enumerated with the aid of the available literature. Unconscious attitudes, sometimes opposite poles of the same psychic complex, may be expressed symbolically by food cravings and aversions. Sometimes aversions may result from repressed cannibalistic tendencies.