A Psychoanalytic Hypothesis about the Effects of Anorexia in Psychosis

Abstract

This paper is an etiological research on anorexia exposing the results of a psychoanalysis study conducted in 2016 with help of a scientific initiation scholarship. Analysis and organization of the conceptual survey on the subject allowed to question the validity of the class of Eating Disorder defined in the fifth edition of DSM-5 and to elucidate anorexia symptoms. We evaluated the psychic determinants that trigger anorexia and verified the consistency of diagnoses of psychosis for cases in which there would be clinical characteristics that, as per the DSM-5, would induce a diagnosis of anorexia. Psychosis was hypothesized to cause certain cases of anorexia where food refusal in favor of cadaverization, devitalisation and rigidity. The Ellen West case involving a patient of the Swiss psychiatrist Ludwig Binswanger served to confirm the hypothesis of this study.

Keywords:
Anorexia; Psychosis; Psychoanalysis; Diagnosis; Psychopathology