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The sick system kills the parts to maintain the whole. To squash all creativity is their goal--that's the ana when mature (with soul). She must transcend the old system: a new family and culture is her role.

Author's Note: Extreme systems like that of the anorexic show what is happening to all systems to a degree. In all sick systems there is a group siding against one, secret alliances, redundancy of moral superiority, denial of change, no true leadership only group rule, and the making of the victim into a fool.

No one has power but that which comes from God. All we see around is false power--ego displays and tyranny. Ego and despotism is the compensation of false power which seeks to smash the meek which it reads as weak. This is the entire basis of anorexia psychosa--an ectomorph dominated and victimized simply by living in the Land of the Big, Brutal and Brusque. Ectomorphy goes with the cerebrotonic temperament which is totally misunderstood and rode roughshod over in the mesomorphic-endomorphic land of the opposite temperaments: social dominance and control.

At the basis of false power is social hypnotism: strength-in-numbers, also known as consensus--the “WE” vs. “ME.” The misfit constantly collides with the prideful majority and is rarely accepted on her terms because like all genius hers lies in contrary instincts and deviant associations couched in austere simplicity. To the “dull normals” around her she seems inanely simple and mad, for she has the tragic ability to see through the contradictions which “everyone knows are true.” Having things on her own terms is only her reward for having come through these group (tough-as-steel) resistances. She must forge enough strength and character to define her own way and go forth freely as Queen--for every day. But until then she must learn how to deal with those in power. Anorexia shows this conflict between the emerging self and the powers that be.

CREATIVITY IS THWARTED

She is born energetic and creative but meets a hard wall. As her creative self-expression is blocked it turns inward to creative self-destruction. Those with the dominant view are always jealous of God’s power in true genius as they think they are Godly--because “everyone knows” the consensus is true reality. The power of group thinking or consensual reality is the herd.

The more energy she has at birth the more energy can be blocked and the more self-destructive she can become. Energy wells up ready for expression and meets an obstruction. If as a child your drawings drew ridicule that creativity turned inward, and thwarted creators can become “bad” or “mad”. Since the energy must go somewhere it is misapplied to sin--recycled in outworn channels of bad habit. There it is, locked in a trap of despair. The most energetic become the worst when warped.

Picture it: As a child you are looking out the window pondering. You’re in a beautiful state of meditation and contemplation. Suddenly someone attacks your reality and calls you “lazy.” Your wonderful reverie is smashed and blocks inward. To adapt you curtail your own desires and act by rote. The striving to be is blocked and neurosis sets in to act out the false self while submerging the true one.

Energy is the same as spirit--it cannot be held down without severe and dire results. When this energy is finally released the result is self-expression--the talents of the True Self--and perfect success against overwhelming odds. If you feel exhausted then most likely someone is robbing you of energy, your most precious asset. People can’t leave well enough alone--though it ain’t broke they still want to fix it! They want your attention--if it’s elsewhere they rebel. You may meet someone and all is congenial. Then they discuss you with someone else, gossip degrades your image and they side against the Great as your new “friend” rejects and projects the mess back onto you. This is just human nature as it adapts in groups the fodder of soap operas: constant treachery in the pecking-order system.

I have seen the conflict between truth and social falsehood (or spirit and group tyranny) so often in psychologists who may know psychology but still want the approval of people. Despite their head knowledge they seek the approval of the herd. Dichotomized, they lose their psychology and become more blind than their patients. Having lost truth they work through the image instead, insisting on being called “Dr.” to underscore their status in that system. Split, true power is gone while the image is staunchly maintained. Owned by the herd they persecute the lonely anorexic who jealously prefers privacy.

These “pros” are outer-adaptants caught up exclusively in an outer journey of negotiated meanings and current fads of thought. If the patient won’t truckle to their promptings to become worldly, hostility emerges. We are now approaching a very dangerous situation with the authority figure in control and angrily wanting to make the other adapt. The “pro” must stay on top to confirm her image and while linking with the family she gains the tragic power to institutionalize the stubborn victim. This split between truth and image does not occur in a spiritual and creative society. So what can one do? Just self-educate and then insulate.

EARLY TRAUMA

We are all born whole and unique. So too the anorexic has a natural biological striving to “be” but meets an obstruction: a sudden searing shock called early trauma. Instantly all creative energies block and mobilize-for-emergency. The brain makes a template of the situation in a drive to correct it, and from that point on she repeats the same mistakes to correct the problem--but never can. That in a nutshell is neurosis: pure repetition acting in the present as if it is the past and never learning from mistakes. Not learning--the low “C” factor of all neurotics--is due to anxiety which we know prevents learning. The anorexic perpetually falls into the same old traps--of the group and her own.

For everything there is a season as normal human evolution takes place. But not so when a template is involved: things are stuck and stagnant--pure repetition. This stagnant redundancy is further frozen with sin---habits (like bulimia) to avoid anxiety from the template, the unfinished business of the past. To succeed one must be apt to receive. But the victim is not receptive to this whistle for she is drowning in the siren within from fear and self-doubt. The question is what comes first: the anorexogenic system (the system to which anorexia is a predictable reaction) or bulimia, incurring harsh punishments in the system? I hope to show it’s a constant feedback for in any system there are no real victims or culprits, just a self-equlibrating system where all parts fit the whole in mutual reinforcement.

FASTING IS GOOD, BULIMIA IS BAD

Her sin and the system’s template intermesh. They become one just as when drinking falls in with lower companions. Her answer is to release this wall of concrete and fly above like a bird---at all times looking down on the system and the world. She finds that fasting or just being thin allows her to transcend time and place and from this new vantage point (while still being stuck in a sexist and stultifying system) she becomes more powerful. The group can never be superior for in all eras its just consensus: “the extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds.” All through history the group was wrong, the individual right. Only in the fasting state can she partially prove this out. Eating, she is completely overcome.

The best example of early trauma, templates, systems and cycles of sin is the anorexogenic family system--the system surrounding anorexia. Since anorexics are perfectionist-overachievers great success occurs when eliminating the influence of these systems and sin cycles. When purified it is now down to the attraction between like elements. Being an intrinsic overachiever and when mature becoming a perfect battleship, her success is inevitable. But let’s review the early life of trauma to understand the fascinating evolution and example of the incredible strength it takes to overcome rigid systems. Remember most anorexics die.

The young girl is not born with a “power drive” like most say. This “power drive” results from the thwarting of the naturally expansive biological striving to become and the feeling of lack of ability which compels constant improvement. This thwarting comes from disconfirmation in a sexist system. “It’s a girl”--only a mere girl. They may think she’s cute but true confirmation of her possible budding significance as a potential VIP is absent. From this early frustration of the need to be. to feel and to have power, a “power drive” results to compensate for this deep gnawing sense of powerlessness coming from early frustration of expansion. Later acculturation only adds to the suffering, stricken sickened sense of self.

CONSTANT ENCROACHMENT

The anorexic constantly re-experiences the tyrannical constraints of relationships: imprisonment and frustration. It is vastly oversimplified to see this as “rejection of femininity” or “reversion to infancy.” What she shows is a keen desire to become an autonomous adult. rejecting femininity which is the terror of just being a passive vessel. What she escapes is the negative part of social existence. It is the stronger intellectual patients who seek emaciation and fasting as the magic key to greater power in society:

Having endured the anorexogenic system which is so disconfirming the anorexic finds fasting a blissful state of well-being and overcoming. Body and spirit are now set free--the whole body-mind is agile and nimble. Material worries and irritations drop away. Her confines of reality are “YES” rather than “NO” as her horizons grow ever-wider. The spirit becomes sensitive, far-seeing and acute, the conscience quick and lively. She fasts to transcend the system burying her alive.

At this point she is hospitalized. Mere admission to the hospital, a rigid and regressive atmosphere causes grave emotional crises as nurses and doctors assume the role of severe parents. Her escape into “symptoms”, her only means of preserving her autonomy from symbiotic and destructive relationships is blocked. When older the crystallized anorexic personality is considered incurable by the socialized pro who can’t sympathize with her need for reclusive isolation. After a lifetime of encroachment, sweet solitude--precious privacy--is all she wants. To understand this syndrome let’s look at the anorexogenic family system, the most extreme example of all such systems.

CONSPIRATORIAL CLIMATES

The home of the anorexic is a conspiratorial climate. All disorders are surrounded by sick systems but the anorexic system is the most severe. These systems have no true leadership: they just block communication through secret alliances shifting blame to the victim when any problems arise. To the anorexic they say: “I reject what you say and your definition of yourself (and myself) in this relationship.” No matter what she says or does her image stays negative in the system. The family constantly stresses her “pathological” state of mind discounting all her messages while ignoring her improvements—and they do this by mutual agreement. This psychotic confusion between past and present is the rule of this system—despite present wellness she is seen through her sick past. As she refuses to be stuffed with food they’ll say “she’s reverted to a grave form of anorexic behavior” though the consequences are invisible. Let’s look at the characteristics of families with these marked communication disorders to see how they maintain the victim’s sickness.

LEADERSHIP

There is no real leadership--it’s a group dynamic which leads. Here we see that the coalition (the group’s siding against one) is the leadership. The group must maintain its identity (as having had the right in its superior position of mistreating the patient in the past) by maintaining the status quo. Thus everything the patient says is ignored or disconfirmed until she ends up thinking “the self is a fiction.” Simultaneously no one leads because each feels a need to blame decisions on the others. About the illness they all say “there is nothing that can be done about it.” The subject is not the patient--she is ignored--but the illness. The result is pathology in leadership for if nothing can be done there is no reason for anyone to take the reins and change with new circumstances. Thus the anorexogenic system is frozen like none other: a leaderless but rigid group mind. Here we see the principal of nonsummativity in systems theory: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts—it is the system which rules and the members are only mindless robots.

The most serious problem is the system of alliances, the basis of a large number of secret rules that are never mentioned or hinted at but distort all patterns of behavior. Without true leadership there’s just the group-mind goal of keeping her down and gossip makes the system run. Any mishap instantly shoots through the family grapevine as the group mind seeks to peg, punish, institutionalize. She is conspicuous against the ground of the pronounced sense of family, the collective identity with her excluded.

A very common system set-up with anorexics is the Cinderella Syndrome of two older sisters who are extremely hostile through envy, disgust and a sense of moral superiority. This is a triad which never changes: it’s always the same two against one and the two always wins, the victim always loses. With their complete power and her powerlessness they can do whatever they want without fear of reprisal. She’s long since been given “outlaw” status so the two sisters justify tough (cruel) love as “helping” the inferior and incompetent—she’s a blank slate for all their deepest and meanest projections. As she seeks escape in God her life vastly improves only to be followed by their accusations of manipulation and deceit—for they disbelieve the invisible. This set-up is so unchanging that she either dies or pulls herself up in spite of it--gaining so much strength in doing so that she wins in all other areas as well. The result is world success, but it’s all too-rare recovery from this mess.

ELDER ALLIANCES

The anorexic’s symptoms appear after a change occurs in her link to the elders, her only protection from peers. Her siblings perceive her as having “special privileges” so as they grow in power and the parents recede the family equilibrium changes along with her presumed “privileges”. As her siblings take control she is thrown down to the ground as her sickness takes on psychotic proportions. At this point self-starvation and bulimia become unconscious devices just to maintain sanity in this system--to carve out a self-nurturing niche and park there. But she is filled with shame--and if one feels shame people can always take more control.

GUT-WRENCHING ISOLATION

The patient begins and ends in isolation from the others in her family. Far from being allied with any one she is secretly detested by all. Her fatal loyalty to the older generation makes her a stranger and a resentment to her siblings. Friendships (her only allies) are never incorporated into the group but only criticized for being too intimate, assuming, gross, dull or morbid. Any new associate they will quickly dissuade against her--“how can you like her--don’t you know what she is?” However if friends or mate turn against her and ally with the family they are instantly incorporated and even bribed for loyalty. This terrifying treachery seals her fate as she loses all faith in all human nature. Insecure, she had desperate dependence on her mate and his turncoat status with the enemy chokes her soul. She spins down to psychoses after the ontologically fatal insight that the world was not what she thought it was. Losing all faith in man and herself, if she does not know God her self-destruction and death is immanent. She is squeezed out of the clan and feels so alone against the pronounced background of the rejecting family. She’d do well to read the Psalms: “I will not be afraid of ten thousand people who have set themselves against me”. Even with recovery the clan puts on her a ban. For her own sanity she must realize she’s the best and the anorexogenic system is the most extreme: She’s recovered not only from a fatal illness but a conspiratorial hate-filled climate to which her disease was a reaction. But it’s a feedback mechanism and a whole system. Her recovery can change that system since its pathology is the rigid (but leaderless) group mind that “things will never change”—so when she does (so drastically due to correct diet and fasting) it can shock them into the contagion of enlightenment.

BLAME-SHIFTING AND GROUP GOSSIP

The mothers and older females all see themselves as completely dedicated to the good of others. Their avowed generosity crushes all criticism of their constant encroachments preventing the victim’s privacy or boundaries. Anyone who refuses to see the mother in this light is attacked. Even indiscrete promiscuous gossip is seen as worthy “to warn others about her.” One anorexic said “My mother told even distant neighbors and acquaintances about my problems so everywhere I went I met similar hateful reactions.” These constant self-righteous invasions are the very things driving the anorexic into cerebetonia (lifelong desire for privacy) and isolation. Due to lost boundaries and after such unrelenting harshness of her sisters everyone seems intrusive and invasive (see “She-Bully” in Ebook-6). Bulimia is a perverted attempt to establish these boundaries: by absorbing herself in food and cooking she is finally flourishing in her own self-nurturing reality which is normally “swallowed” by the family system. Food means “mother”--she is mothering herself since no one else will.

REDUNDANCY OF MORAL SUPERIORITY

In a system where her every word is rejected, rejecting food maintains this interactional style. Since he’s the “professional” the therapist incorporates well into a system where all play morally superior. But in joining the superior group he is made impotent as he confirms their false view about the patient and her illness. He is paid to lie, to succumb to the tyranny of the group. The whole communicational repertoire--rejection of messages, disconfirmation, invasion of boundaries, blame-shifting and secret alliances--are all highly repetitive patterns geared to keep things the same. The anorexic system--the system to which anorexia is the only appropriate reaction--is the most rigid and repetitive of all systems whether psychotic, depressant or alcoholic. There are so many interesting facts: e.g. with dual alcoholism in the parents 95% of daughters become bulimic. The eating function becomes disturbed in the context of constant arguments at meal time. No system shows more clearly how creative energy is blocked when the normal drive to become, to be and to be confirmed is lost. Energy blocked turns self-destructive. She fasts to become invisible since she already is in that system. Subconsciously her body seeks to reflect her missing selfhood. But the fast is also the only way she can feel good as a True Self.

HUMOR-HUMBLING

Humor becomes the system’s defense mechanism: intelligent, witty exchanges and funny faces condescend towards the patient. These cruel evasions are performed so subtly and with such “good will” they escape detection, becoming a secret weapon to confuse and degrade her further. Humor can be very destructive along with other devices to maintain the system. The alert therapist should say “how can you stand these people who degrade you constantly?” But the outer psychologist who only wants to join the powers that be--and pay--says “why are you so bad or mad? Why can’t you just eat right? Why can’t you have congenial relations with your family?”

WEAK FATHERS AND THERAPISTS

If the therapist could be the substitute father the generation gap could open and the daughter could finally start living her own life. But kept in her maligned position, even far-off separations keep her obsessed with her oppressors in her thoughts, jealousies, resentments and transferences. She will see the same system played out with new people with her one-down. Her only solution is to embark on an absorbing inner journey which she already desires with all her soul. But due to low self-esteem, fear of being alone, supposed need for protection or “advice” or a need to feel confirmed she gets involved, stays down, feels invaded and often reacts with the same old devices of bulimia or starving. She must face and resolve the old system and her place in it, and the greatest possible outcome could be a mature lady in new town or family.

The best therapist would become an intelligent effectual father for the patient. Her own “ineffectual father” was the product of the same system--the co-op between the other members. Humiliation of the father was required to avoid changes, for a strong father requests change or adaptation to new needs but a group-controlled male tows the line--only to eventually be written off as his role is given to a son or son-in-law. This changing of the guard is pure disaster on the already invaded and despicably mistreated anorexic. The sons-in-law have had it with her and now that they rule their aim is to fix her for good.

EXPOSING ALLIANCES

To better combat perverse triangles the goal of therapy must be to expose them. These are secret never-acknowledged coalitions against one. Whenever the behavior of two betrays their secret compact the treachery is instantly washed over by meta-communication. For example one older sister gossips to the other about the victim who can always tell when they’ve talked as the first sister becomes mean (calling it “tough love”). If the victim confronts the pattern she is called “paranoid.” This is the main pathology of the sick system: the coalition first, and the simultaneous denial of it, second.

A “coalition” is an unchanging joint action against a third person, in contrast to a shifting alliance in which two out of three people make common cause. Such dualities as good-bad, positive-negative and sick-well have no place in this cybernetic model of homeostatic systems. There are no “causes” just here and now the entire family collaborates to maintain the status quo (of two against one) and any accusation just hardens their self-defense (putting her down). They treat the victim’s symptoms as “badness” leading to instant disqualification for respected membership in their morally superior family. This group hate changes the course of the disease from “nervosa” to “psychosa” as she takes on the sinister outcast archetype of the shadow–projections of others and her symptoms magnify. The feedback (mutual reinforcement) in the cybernetic system is evident.

What characterizes the family as system are the transactional patterns repeated with high frequency. These redundancies become rules maintaining rigid stability and the outcome are symptoms. Redundancy is most extreme in this system and thus the victim feels there is no hope--things will never be any different. She is literally made by these system etchings in her brain--she is programmed beyond her control. She becomes hypersensitive to people siding against her--she feels it and she creates it from the system template (her script). It becomes impossible to trust female friends. She wants to get out, to get well but is strapped in her chair while simultaneously being “hit” by what feels like outside forces demanding she binge, starve, seclude, go moot and suffer. Later the inability to trust defines her Queenship for now she can only rule and never mingle. To not rule means the Queen is lost--so she becomes hypersensitive to even minute changes in people’s behavior--a characteristic of the millionairess.

BULIMIA: STARVED FOR IDENTITY

What these redundancies do is not “make her eat” so much as starve her identity—because the family refuses to confirm her. The meaner they get the more compulsive, unconscious and essential her eating device to keep some sense of self. Starving--becoming invisible--makes things congruent with her missing self-esteem. She constantly makes new resolutions to act right, only to relapse into the same unconscious state. Bulimia or starving simply seems to make things better. And shame and embarrassment aside, it has long since dropped into the unconscious as just something she must do. But since bulimia causes more disorder in the system and her perception, she only gets worse and the system becomes more condemning, caustic, controlling and contemptible.

There are many who would judge the bulimic anorexic. To those judges I would ask--have you ever been in total anxiety all the time amidst a hostile environment--your own family who hates you? This is an environment in which you are ever-condemned without trial and it’s always the same prejudiced jury. It’s a system in which one is ever-trapped and -tricked and in which all positive changes are re-defined as negative. When evolved she will fast at her enemies never “eat at them” but in the weak and sickly stage through the reptilian brain she slides back into whatever works, the only “slot” there is. With anxiety or anger the brain auto-regresses into previously successful strategies all the while “food” means mother—she is seeking nurturance in the midst of hostility. There is no thought to such regression--its an automatic response to fear and her impossibly painful plight by slipping back into the behavior that “works”. The anorexic is in the “burning building syndrome”—she feels there is no escape yet seeks it everywhere.

REDUNDANCY AND FAMILY RULES

The anorexic is blamed for all that goes wrong--everything is due to her illness. But a family is a self-governing system based on rules established through a series of trials and errors. All members are elements in a circuit in which no one element can have unilateral control over the rest. The behavior of one member is not the cause but rather the effect of their behavior. Family systems theory is the study of fixed behavior responses and their repercussions---symptoms. But the whole system thinks the patient because of her symptoms wields power over the rest rendering them helpless, never thinking their own interactions may be causing her noxious behavior. What came first, hatred or habit?

This is a common error of Western culture and psychiatry: the idea of “self” transcending the system and hence being in control of that system (blame). And thus their reducing the victim to impotence is just the due and right response. Their tight and hostile alliance against her is condign punishment, and they can’t see it any other way. Any attempt on her part to rise up is squashed, violently opposed and re-labeled. They must maintain the scapegoat lest they face their own part in the system.

Over-protectiveness, encroachment and prevention of autonomy would irritate any alert therapist who would also see how those in power dispense punishments, prohibitions or occasional presents to make their presence felt. Mixed signals from all the pretense abound so the victim mistrusts her own feelings. For example the older sister backed by the mother is envious of the patient’s good looks and treats her with a mixture of concerned affection and great cruelty. This behavior sears deep into the anorexic’s sensitive system--if her sisters seem spiteful and nasty it is because she deserves it! Binging and starving is all that lets her know she exists, that she can still feel, even occasionally enjoy.

RIGID HOMEOSTASIS BRINGS SYMPTOMS

The more intense the cold war waged by secret coalitions, the more secret. These pathological systems are governed by secret rules that shun the light of day and bind the family together with pathological ties that depend on the victim’s one-down state. Her “symptoms” develop in systems threatening her demise for they act as submission rites to ward off aggression. The system gives her no choice but to escape and take refuge in her symptoms, for she has no avenue to creatively self-express--only to self-destruct.

In systems theory we shift the focus from the individual to the wider relationship. Here we see pure redundancy: anorexia is monotonous repetition as each member rejects her messages. The illness is always shrewdly presented in the same old moralistic and sacrificial tone (“symmetry through sacrificial escalation”). Without leadership there are only alliances against her, combined with blame-shifting. As time passes these patterns extend from the nuclear to the extended family (the sister’s children are trained to hate her too) and any new acquaintances of the patient to whom the members “tell all” to dissipate their admiration. The victim learns to expect this and even in later years will never introduce any new contact to her family.

FAMILY VS. SELF

The collective sense of the family is so pronounced with her excluded that the lonely anorexic is increasingly pushed into the background. The family tends to stick together like a brood of ducklings. The grandmothers can play a major role in the family disorder and the father is so unsure of himself and afraid of independent women he married someone with many shortcomings. However intelligence, adaptability, culture, imagination and interests appeals to the father so he admires the over-achieving daughter but hides it when mother is around who becomes hostile and envious. This engenders more mixed signals and interlocking jealousy patterns. Female competition can be very cruel in this world. (See Jung’s work The Three Sisters to see the deep and dangerous archetypes evoked.) Usually it ends in two against one and this constellation never changes. The victim never wins and gets used to always losing. But overcoming this turgid template can be done and the strength garnished to do so could make her a world leader in her field.

Sexism is a suffocating obstruction to achieving females as the energy turns inward. Perhaps they would have “chosen” alcoholism or drugs as their “sin of choice” but the loss of control, sure institutionalization or further degradation by family would have been intolerable to these types. Anorexia and bulimia are the only ways to recycle their enormous energy, ingather their forces, create their own reality, use their own time in their own way and still stay relatively in control of the situation. Anorexia is usually a feminine illness from well-to-do families. Why? Because these families often ensure smooth-running solidarity and harmony through authoritarian set-ups and the subordination of woman.

The Bottom to the Top, the Top to the Bottom

Having absolutely no control of the sexist system the anorexic drives this energy inward to absolute control of her own world--herself. If she can learn to turn lemons into lemon-aid and overcome this greatest obstacle--the stubborn system keeping her down--she builds a perfect battleship for war and the power to manage a huge world corporation. So great is her energy that when held down and turned inward she is the most self-destructive of all (bankruptcy, binges, brawls), but garnished and turned outward to good her self-improvement reaches monolithic levels. If she can learn to harness, tame and redirect this enormous energy she can greatly benefit the world of other persecuted pansies priming to push-up to powerful predominance. When she transcends all disorder (beyond mere eating patterns) and attains immaculate order in all areas instead, all that energy goes outward to world success. For those survivors the sky’s the limit as the held-down energy bursts forth and catapults them up to greatest influence.

Like all systems the family tends towards homeostasis. But no living system can survive unless free to evolve to change when conditions change. A system dies if it has such rigid homeostasis that even the slightest positive feedback like her transformation is ignored. It will come back to haunt them as enantiodromia occurs: as the worst becomes the best. This inversion of systems means one goes up and the other(s) go down for nothing stays the same. When that whole homeostasis depended on her illness and she is now well and thriving something has to break. Throughout history the family was a homeostatic barrier against social change and the most rapid changes are seen today. Objections are eliminated in these systems by eradicating--making impotent--those who object!

ANOREXIA IS A SOCIAL ILLNESS

“A man’s foes shall be they of his own household.” Jesus also said that “he that loveth father and mother more than me is not worthy of me.” Of particular import “a prophet is never known in his (her) own home or town.” So true. For nothing the anorexic does can ever change the image--the leaderless group-mind simply redefines the new situation to suit the template with her one-down. Anorexic families are the most stubbornly resistant to change, causing a crises in a system from which there is no escape but to recycle energy inward through symptoms: homeostasis. Then her magnified symptoms compel the others to join forces to deal with her illness--as hand joins in hand they are more solid than peas in a pod. All group photographs exclude her, as do their parties. Gossip is the only way she is included. Otherwise when she walks in the room all turn aside.

Could there be any doubt that anorexia is a social illness, particularly since it is specifically bound up with the extreme system described? Yet hospitalization--although it removes her from the family--rarely brings permanent relief and generally causes deterioration of her state as it is just as bound up by hierarchies, demands and domination, sexism, deceitful alliances with family and disconfirmation of her. Any objections she may have to hospital food or any desire she may have to be fruit-fat-fastarian--the cure for bulimia, food addiction or failure to thrive--will likely be met with mockery and rejection. It is all just “another facet” of her illness. They already know how her intelligence can justify anything with science research.

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ANOREXIC SYSTEMS