THE CHOICE OF "NOTHING": PSYCHOANALYTIC REFLECTIONS ABOUT ANOREXIA

Abstract

This essay discusses the anorexic behavior as a symptom among young women and young men, based on the case of a young woman in the context of clinical experience in psychoanalysis. From the psychoanalytical point of view, eating "nothing" as an anorexic symptom can be construed/regarded as what Lacan refers to as dialectic of frustration, where the object "nothing" works as an object of symbolic satisfaction that separates the subject from the Other. In this sense, the psychological dynamic that falls within these cases is related to the satisfaction of the drive (pulsion) faced by both sexes. By bearing in mind that this dynamic is structural for all subjects, one may consider that it is the recovery of a place for discourse, where subjects build new barriers to the insatiable desire of the Other. It indicates the possibility of treatment of anorexic individuals. DOI: 10.12957/demetra.2016.22502