The Secret Language of Eating Disorders
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This paper is a discussion of Peggy Claude-Pierre's book, The Secret Language of Eating Disorders. Claude-Pierre is a specialist in the outpatient treatment of individuals suffering from anorexia and bulimia, two extreme and little-understood psychological conditions that have traditionally been considered to be problems primarily for girls and young women, precipitated by their unreasonable reactions to societal demands of physical perfection. Claude-Pierre suggests that, because these disorders have been considered to be women's problems and to be primarily consciously motivated, they have not been studied with the same seriousness they would have been accorded had they been seen to strike an equal number of men. Instead, Claude-Pierre argues, anorexia and bulimia can strike all ages and both genders, and each disorder is a form of slow suicide in response to an overwhelming psychological condition that has very little to do with being female in America. Claude-Pierre first started to study anorexia when her oldest daughter began suffering from the condition. She found, "Much of what is commonly presumed about eating disorders is largely mistaken or touches only on a superficial level of understanding" (6). One of the most devastating presumptions made by the medical community was that anorexia is incurable and likely to result in death. Because doctors believed they could not help anorexics, their care often consisted of preparing the family for the patient's inev
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e often encouraged to be more nurturing and self-sacrificing, she believes, they are more likely to suffer from the condition. However, CNC has never been an exclusively female problem, and the balance is already starting to shift.
Anorexia and bulimia are relatively recent diagnoses. Claude-Pierre contends that, because they have not been studied over a long period, they are subject to serious misconceptions based on unproven theories about their causes and common features. When these disorders were first categorized, the majority of sufferers were indeed adolescent girls, yet Claude-Pierre points out, "Eating disorders among men are on the rise - at least one million men number among the eight million people afflicted with them in the United States" (70). She argues that this rise is directly attributable to changing roles in society; as men are increasingly allowed to display their own sensitivity and ability to be caregivers, they are also becoming more vulnerable to the psychological destruction of eating disorders. The number of cases among women has not been growing significantly, while the number of male sufferers is noticeably increasing.
For some, this argument suggests that the equal rights movement is helping
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Approximate Word count = 1256
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)
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