The Body in Anorexia: Gaze, Denial and Jouissance

Abstract

Anorexia nervosa is one of the most widespread psychopathological disorders of the 21st century. At the center of this pathological condition, we find an existential suffering expressed through the body. The author, with the aid of the phenomenological and psychoanalytical perspective, defines the body of the anorexic subject as a dead body, a body without desire. Through the rejection of food, the anorexic subject rejects the other of language, locking himself in a spiral of pure jouissance that distances him from the world. In existential terms, the closure to the world represents the crucial element of the clinic of anorexia, a closure that is expressed through a loss of desire. The anorexic subject thus appears interested in preserving only the physiological dimension of the body, rejecting the affective-pulsional part. Following the difference made by Merleau-Ponty between corpe propre and corps objectif, the author observes how anorexia is characterized by a logic focused on having a body, rejecting the dimension of being a body. The final part of the article also discusses the position of the anorexic subject with respect to the dimension of space and time from a phenomenological perspective.