Abjection,Traumatic Themes,and Alexithymia in Anorexia Nervosa
Abstract
Patients with anorexia nervosa frequently describe feeling that their bodies, or parts of their bodies, are disgusting, ugly, gross, or “fat.” In this article, I develop an understanding of these feelings, using Kristeva’s notion of abjection, which highlights an aspect of the subjective experience of anorexic patients. This can be accounted for by two traumatic themes, i.e., aspects of the mother-child narcissistic object relation often observed in this patient population: (1) an experience of having been subjected to intrusive foreign bodies and (2) the formation of a rotten core. These patterns of experience hobble the mind’s capacity for representation and symbolization, which has led many theorists to invoke the concept of alexithymia, accounting for the repetitive, concrete quality of the anorexic patient’s clinical presentation. Such a conceptualization—illustrated with several brief case excerpts—points to an important mechanism of therapeutic action for this population.
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Alexithymia and differences in conveying emotion in AN may be interlaced with atypical interoception and trauma survival, as well as autism-trauma intersections.
“Alexithymia and differences in conveying emotion in AN may also be interlaced with atypical interoception [96–99] and trauma survival, as well as autism-trauma intersections [100–104].”
From A lived experience response to the proposed diagnosis of terminal anorexia nervosa: learning from iatrogenic harm, ambivalence and enduring hope (2023) · cites this paper as [103]
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- Authors
- Wooldridge, T.
- Affiliations
- University of California, San Francisco (US)
- Corresponding author
- Wooldridge, Tom
- ORCID
- Wooldridge, Tom
- Venue
- Contemporary Psychoanalysis
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2021-04-03
- Volume
- 57
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 327-353
- ISSN
- 0010-7530 (ISSN-L)
- 2330-9091
- OpenAlex
- W3190496820
- Cited by
- 7
- References
- 95
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 1
- FWCI
- 0.85
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Contemporary Psychoanalysis (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Eating Disorders and Behaviors
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Psychoanalysis and Psychopathology Research
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Psychosomatic Disorders and Their Treatments
- Keywords
- anorexia nervosa, abjection, alexithymia, Julia Kristeva, body image, therapeutic action
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