Eating Compulsions

In existential analysis it is understood that "the reality of being-in-the-world is lost" if one of the modes of being is "emphasized to the exclusion" of the others (May 63). These three modes are: Umwelt, which refers to the biological world, or environment; Mitwelt, which is the world of interrelationships with others; and Eigenwelt, the "mode of relationship to one's self" (May 61). Two cases taken from Binswanger's "The Case of Ellen West" demonstrate how individuals whose behaviors bear a number of very strong similarities exhibit, on closer examination, differences in their relationships to particular modes. The cases are those of Ellen West herself and Nadia, a patient of Janet. Both women exhibited overemphasis on a single mode, largely existing in relation to that mode while ignoring the others. But, despite strong similarities between their behaviors, the two women's conceptions of what those behaviors meant, combined with the study of the details of their cases, demonstrated that West's existence, at least in the final phases of her life, was in the Eigenwelt while Nadia's existence was largely limited to the Mitwelt, or to the desire to escape that mode altogether by starving her body into non-existence.

Binswanger noted that these two cases were the only ones he knew of in which "an outspoken dread of becoming fat" was expressed (331). He said that unspoken aversions to being fat were common among girls and women, but that West and Nadia were unusual i

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typically male, sometimes heroic. But Nadia wished to be neither a male nor a female. She made every effort to appear to be a male and the onset of primary sex characteristics "made her half-crazy" (Binswanger 333). Nadia wished to be entirely without sex, without body. It was her body that gave rise to her feelings of loathing and the refusal to eat was just one manifestation of this loathing. The other important similarity between the two women was the desire to remain young that was manifested in their eating behaviors. Nadia claimed that she wished to remain a child because she would be loved less if she matured. West, on the other hand, simply wished to remain young, "like her ethereal girl friends" (Binswanger 333). Despite the similarities between the two cases, the women's orientations toward the modes of being is revealed as being completely different. Nadia's body shame was manifested in her desire to absent her bodily self completely. She did not want to have a sex, to nourish herself, or even to be seen or heard. This desire to detach herself from her body was a desire to "withdraw from the Mitwelt and lead a purely solipsistic existence" (Binswanger 334). As Binswanger points out, Nadia's "thoroughly hy

Category: Psychology - E