This article elaborates on Freud's position that anorexia is a neurosis parallel to melancholia. The author suggests that the link between melancholia and anorexia is to be found in the field of narcissism. Four aspects of melancholia are discussed, allowing an approximation of these two conditions. They , among them, inhibition, the perspective of a critical instance that differs from the ego and can turn against it, the sadism with which that critical instance treats the ego, and identification of the ego with the object.
Anorexia; melancholia; parallel; narcissism