ABSTRACT
A new syndrome, called variously the gorging and purging syndrome, bulimarexia (Boskind-Lodahl & Sirlin, 1977), and bulimia nervosa (Russell, 1979), has been described in the past few years. Some consider it a part of the wide spectrum of anorexia nervosa; others see in it a separate syndrome. In this chapter, I intend to show that bulimarexia forms a continuum with anorexia nervosa which can only be differentiated from it when detailed attention is paid to the character structure of the patient and the moment of development which has become the major stumbling block. Descriptively, the two syndromes have many characteristics in common, and most authors who have written about anorexia nervosa have not made any distinction between the two syndromes. Developmentally, bulimarexia appears as a consequence of interactions with the maternal object which affect the child slightly later than those related to anorexia nervosa; the child’s interaction with the mother and parents is different and, as a consequence, the character structure of the child is also different.
