Le corps anorexique comme le lieu d’expression d’une souffrance familiale

Abstract

Anorexia nervosa fascinates because it re-enacts death in such an ostentatious way that it causes a turbine of such strength that it destabilises the family environment, awakens the spectres and threatens the foundations on which the family is built. Through the prism of food, these young girls talk to us about questions of importance for society: the weight of the family history on the construction of the modern family, intergenerational transmission, the evolution of the parental role, our relationship with death, etc. In order to be effective, the treatment of anorexia requires a complete, multimode takeover, in which the maltreated body and mind are taken care of in their mental and physical entirety. Our clinical experience enables us to better comprehend the intergenerational mechanisms that characterise the transmission of family suffering. It also reminds us that the body has a formidable individual, collective, transgenerational and even phylogenetic memory. In this article, we present a summary of our observations of the results of the multimode treatment we offer our anorexic patients at our psychiatric clinic. We specify the articulation of the family therapy to reveal the spectres (Abraham and Torok, 1978) [5] that impregnate the relational fabric within these family bubbles, the bodily work which enables the re-establishment of contact with a physical memory attached to these spectres and the individual psychotherapy which enables the verbalisation of the spectral memory.