The need to control, seen in clinical work with patients having eating disorders, led us to wonder whether this type of symptom might be the expression of obsessive factors or even of melancholy. Other aspects of this clinical work, such as the refusal to accept reality, the difficulty in dealing with losses, and self-accusatory discourse, warrant the association of such disorders with melancholy and underline its seriousness.
Eating disorders; control; adolescence; melancholy