ABSTRACT
Anorexia nervosa, first reported by Richard Morton in 1694, has shown a dramatic rise during the past twenty years, and more especially in the last decade. The rise in the incidence of anorexia nervosa provides woman with an unusually visible example of the way in which psychic structure and symptom formation are determined by three factors: the social climate of a period; particular models of parenting; and the attempt of each generation to find its place in the world. This chapter examines how these influences interact and how the tensions within each one are expressed. It focuses on the mother–daughter relationship to understand in finer detail how the pressures on contemporary parenting affect the construction of the psychology of femininity – a psychology that creates a fertile ground for the development of the whole range of eating problems and body-image difficulties that so many women experience.
