Anorexia nervosa e bulimia à luz da psicanálise: a complexidade da relação mãe-filha

Abstract

The purpose of our study is to investigate and understand the psychoanalytic innermost mechanisms involved in anorexic and bulimic young women based on their clinical attendance setting. The psychoanalysis utilized in this research is of bion-kleinian origin which specially contributes to interpret the patients conflicts as manifestations having origin in psychological suffering. They can be considered as oral symptoms of anxiety bound to primitive stages of the mind development, specially as early ruptures with an internalized maternal image. The psychoanalytical approach arouses the perception that both anorexia and bulimia are linked in a deadly alternation resulting in a daughter and mother fused in a corporeal prison, in eternal searchfor filling an empty interior, searching for an ideal never reached, which brings a feeling of constant debt, nameless sadness, life edging death. An illusion of self sufficiency is established, where the relationship of nutrition and ego disorder will grow to a desperate point: Anorexia of life, anorexia of thoughts in the most deep of a mind that tricks with the possibilities of suffering pain. A story of passion, mother and daughter bound together, dependent on each other, but at the same time feeling haunted by the dependence which involves their relationships, both fighting against the basic elements of femininity: food, corporeal aspects and fertilization. I do not think however that a refusal of the feminine is the root of anorexia and bulimia. I think the opposite: What is really happening is a girllooking for the feminine core inside of her. There are certainly traces of life under the ruins of destruction stamped in her body, which was only victim of a big mistake. A swallowed or dismissed mother, a lost father would not have his place in the patients relationship. I think that the emaciation imposed through the anorexia as well as the bulimic attacks are manners used by the patient to find her internal parental couple again, and restare her own identity. It will also occur during starvation rituaIs, when severe abstinence is demanded to obtain pureness, truth and peace