L’anorexie mentale : une fatigue de ne pas être soi ?

Abstract

This article understands anorexia nervosa as a strategy for self-production, shaping the body in a certain way to achieve intersubjective recognition. More precisely, it would be a strategy to systematically achieve three objectives characteristic of modern social existence, where individuals are called upon to achieve themselves through their own resources, freeing themselves from any authority. Subjected to the injunction to be “someone”, and to achieve a remarkable individual performance, the anorexic subject would be singularly sensitive to the risks of failure that constitute these two social ideals. Thus, 1) thinness would allow the anorexic subject to avoid the question of his or her identity, by producing through the thin body a type of identity rather than a true subjectivity. Scared at the idea of not being able to define the borders and faculties of the “self”, the anorexic person would hide behind the type of identity suggested by a very slim appearance. 2) Working on their body, the anorexic subject would escape the hazards of conventional forms of work and self-actualization, by choosing a material – their own body – over which they have immediate power and which a priori only tests their will, by suppressing any external, unmanageable hazard. 3) Conscious of the social representations with which leanness is invested, the anorexic subject would control the kind of judgment made on them by others: they would thus escape the risk, normally structural, of not being recognized by the other conscious subjects, or of being misunderstood by them.