Anorexia can be described in different ways, depending on what model we employ to do this. Firstly, Freud saw it as an outcome of hysteria (1895), and Abraham as an instinctual state (or instinctual failure) of the oral stage (even up to the present day, his splendid writings on the character and stages of instinctual development, continue to help us understand the anchoring to the oral stage and the transformations of sublimation). Successively, Kleinian object psychoanalysis considered it a severe deficit in the PS_D position, whilst in the reorganization brought about by Bion’s theories, anorexic somatization is described as the realization of an inverted container-contained function (Bruni, 2002). The point of view of the failing development of the separation-individuation process (Mahler, 1975), the symbolization (Segal 1957), and Winnicott’s idea of the transitional object, all contributed to bring the theme back onto the lines of valorising its origins Read more