ABSTRACT
Chapter Two, hunger in the nursery, compares and contrasts the feeding experiences of two newborns, illustrating how physical and emotional digestion are linked from the beginning of life, and how nature and nurture intersect in forming eating and thinking patterns. While no parent can be perfectly attuned to all the needs of his/her infant, and all infants bring their unique genetic proclivities along with them into the world, a ‘collision of forces’ between an infant’s needs and the parents’ abilities to meet them can leave an infant hungering for that elusive “something” to fill an emptiness that remains as physical as it is emotional. The chapter illustrates the influence such mis- and dis-connections can have on the development of one of those newborns—the author’s (composite) patient—and how they heralded the emergence of her binge/purge eating disorder.
