Understanding anorexia: an hermeneutic approach as a methodological alternative for the field of contemporary anorexia research

Theories of anorexia nervosa have mainly been dominated by psychiatry and concentrate upon its physiological aspects, both in diagnosis and treatment. This has led to a search for organic causes behind anorectic conditions, instead of seeing it as molded and shaped both by the individual and the socio-cultural context. This "medicalisation" has been an impediment to a more complete conceptualisation of the experience of discipline and of the ascetic modes of action in anorexia. The intension is to approach anorexia as lived process. The focus is not in explaining what cause anorexia, but is centered on the contents of living experience as such. Thus, the author proposes a phenomenological approach to anorexia as a methodological alternative compared to the dominant medico-psychological approaches to anorexia of today. If we consider the body of an anorectic person as an intersection in which the subject's relationship to social reality will be materialized and verified, we are able to see first how accurate a picture of the dual meanings, double bindings and paradoxical commitments of our present culture and its relation to a woman's body anorexia will draw up. Also, because the fact is that anorexia is a predominantly "women's" illness we have to take in account that the construction of subjectivity and in this context the construction of a lived anorectic experience of discipline, is not a gender-neutral process