ABSTRACT
The interlocutors of this intercultural dialogue are two psychiatrists who share an interest in placing anorexia nervosa, or self-starvation, in cultural context. Mervat Nasser is a woman from Egypt who now works in England as a consultant psychiatrist and has written Culture and Weight Consciousness (1997). Vincenzo Di Nicola was born in Italy, educated in Canada and England as a psychologist and psychiatrist, and now works in Montreal as a consultant psychiatrist for an eating disorders unit; he has written on cultural and historical aspects of eating disorders (Di Nicola, 1990a, 1990b), child psychiatry (Di Nicola, 1992) and family therapy (Di Nicola, 1997). As well as anorexia nervosa, both psychiatrists share an interest in what they call, respectively, ‘body regulation’ (Nasser has studied the new veiling phenomenon among Moslem women, Nasser, 1999) and ‘body modification’ (Di Nicola has worked with self-mutilation among young people, Di Nicola and Epstein, 1998).
