III. ANOREXIA AND BULIMIA: TWO ASPECTS OF ADOLESCENCE

The author describes the shocking rapidity of bodily change which overtakes the pubescent and adolescent body while the mind may be still that of a child. She describes the way that these changes can make the child feel trapped in a body so alarming that she is filled with claustrophobic fears and agoraphilic longings for freedom from it. These are translated into anorexic behaviours whose denial of her body with its feelings and desires result in a loss of contact with it. The results instead are agoraphobic terrors and claustrophilic longings which translate into bulimic behaviours. The author describes the way in which she uses Ferrari's conceptual framework in order to break this claustrophobic-agoraphobic see-saw and to gradually accustom her patients to their new corporeal environment together with its issues of gender identity and sexuality using several clinical examples