This document summarizes the approaches of different disciplines to anorexia nervosa. Psychiatry views it as related to perfectionism or OCD and examines genetic factors. Psychology sees it as individually sourced from low self-esteem. Social psychology focuses on social dynamics' effects. Sociology analyzes society's influence through feminist and Foucauldian perspectives. Social anthropology uses ethnographic fieldwork. Marxist views examine body as a political arena and AN's relationship to class and gender roles. Feminism critiques views of female body as object and AN as resisting social control of women's bodies. The disciplines provide varied but overlapping perspectives on AN's causes and meanings.

1. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 82 (2013) 492 – 495
1877-0428 © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.
Selection and peer review under the responsibility of Prof. Dr. Kobus Maree, University of Pretoria, South Africa.
doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.06.298
World Conference on Psychology and Sociology 2012
Anorexia Nervosa as a Modern Disease: A Comparative Study of
Different Disciplines
Zeynep Ekin Bal a*
, Muge Caroline Dikencik b
a
Istanbul University, Institute of Social Sciences, Beyazit, Istanbul 34452 Turkey,
b
Maltepe University,Institute of Arts and Sciences, Maltepe, Istanbul 34857 Turkey.
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to discuss the approaches of different disciplines through comparisons of their methodologies and
assessments. Taking all these approaches into account, the purpose of this study is to scrutinize how different disciplines
approach the modern body through the examination of anorexic experience. The study focuses on anorexia because ,as an
intersection point of multiple disciplines, it is a good case of how different fields have particular methodologies and analysis
on same issues.
Selection and peer review under the responsibility of Prof. Dr. Kobus Maree, University of Pretoria, South Africa.
Keywords: Anorexia, Anorexia Nervosa, Multidisciplinary Approach.
1. Introduction
Anorexia Nervosa (AN) is defined as a disease based on distorted body image. Anorexics have an extreme
desire for losing weight by neglecting eating and over-exercising. Even though it is considered mainly a
psychiatric disease, it is a multidimensional and multidisciplinary subject.
2. Methodologies and approaches of different disciplines
Psychiatry relates anorexia with perfectionism or obsessive-compulsive disorder and also questions
connections between anorexia and genetic inheritance. While psychology handles it as more individually-sourced
disease which manifests itself with low self-esteem, social psychology focuses on the social dynamics that affect
the individual. Sociology makes a society-oriented analysis on body politics through gender oriented feminist
critics or discipline-and-punish oriented Foucauldian reading. Social anthropology, on the other hand, makes use
of ethnographic field work through par
* Corresponding author: Zeynep Ekin Bal. Tel: +90-533-627-7736
E-mail address: zeynepekinbal@gmail.com
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
© 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.
Selection and peer review under the responsibility of Prof. Dr. Kobus Maree, University of Pretoria, South Africa.

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Zeynep Ekin Bal and Muge Caroline Dikencik / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 82 (2013) 492 – 495
2.1. Psychiatric approach
Zucker et al. (2007) studied social cognition in order to provide efficacy to therapeutic process of the
anorexic patient. They argue that the disease disturbs the perception of the inner process, thus the patient loses
In essence, an individual with AN is disconnected from her internal
experiences and thus does not use internal signals of hunger, fatigue, or affective state to guide behavior
Redlich, & Steiner, 2003). Zucker (2007) points out the methodological challenges in
attachment researches and in his large-scale longitudinal study conducted in Sweden he analyzed the relationship
between AN and autism. The study into teenage-onset anorexia nervosa confirmed that 23% of people with a
long-standing eating disorder are on the autism spectrum. Shoebridge and Gowers (2000), through using
retrospective case-control study, minimized methodological challenges by comparing 40 patients to the sample of
age- and sex-matched healthy controls. They found a correlation between the separation anxiety and AN at older
ages. Another study by Troisi, Massaroni, and Cuzzolaro (2005) examined the relationship between early
separation anxiety and current attachment disturbance comparing a group of adult women with AN to a sample
with BN, so they reported that women with AN show stronger correlation between the two symptoms. A unique
design by Waters, Beumont, Touyz, and Kennedy (1990) shows that one of the twins with AN related less to
their siblings compared to the healthy twins.
2.2-Psychological & socio-psychological approach
Hesse-Biber et al.(2006) took the issue of anorexia from the social psych The
mass marketing of disordered eating and Eating Disorders: The social psychology of women, thinness and
p. 208). They declared that an in-debth socio-cultural analysis rather than the
clinical research provided a more proper understanding of the increasing disordered eating patterns, especially for
the last 40 years Hesse-Biber et al.,
2006, p. 208).
2.3. Sociological & social-anthropological approach
alternative regimen, an anarchy 1984, p. 190). Turner (1984) in his book
AN is an axis of symbolic opposition as well as a biologic symptom.
Political opposition was minimized and mimicked in the form of an individual torture, starvation. Turner (1984)
points out that AN contrasted with the Durkheimian theory of suicide. For Durkheim, egoistic suicide is an
individualistic choice to terminate her/his life but sociologically it is concluded by the weakeness of social ties
Turner argued that it was the
opposite. Though AN was a kind of suicide, it was concluded by the over-socialization rather than the
individualization of society. In his book
recommended by Jaques Lacan in 1994, Mannoni (1973) -protective
In social science discipline, Thomas and Marikay Vander Ven analyzed anorexia nervosa with a sociological
and an anthropological perspective. Vander Ven concentrated on the socially defined role of women examining
the relationship between social construction and initial dynamics of the disease. In 1940s and 1950s when women
entered academics and mental health sciences field for the first time, abusive mothers began to be defined as the
real cause of any indication of anorexia which was named as mother blame rhetoric (Vander Ven, p. 102).
metaphor of structural crisis. All disease is disorder- Halmi,
1992, p. 19).

3. 494 Zeynep Ekin Bal and Muge Caroline Dikencik / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 82 (2013) 492 – 495
2.4. Marxist approach
Turner (1973) said that
t and autonomy is thus fought out in a political language of opposition to
the bonding created between family members by the common table. The political metaphors of medical
language are particularly interesting in this respect. A regimen is government of the body and the forms of
eating imposed by parents on their children can thus be seen as an aspect of a domestic government or a
regime for the control of bodies. (pp. 189-190)
Turner (1973) considered body as a political arena on which the hegemonic relationships of the outer world
exists. On -
references between gender and class. Turner noted that AN is a middle-upper class disease. More specifically,
anorexic girls used to belong to educated families and generally had difficulties about being an independent
person and taking responsibility. They felt that they could not individually control any subject belonging to their
own lives.
I Starving and Hungry: Anorexia and the Female Body Politic Fraad (2009) tried to integrate
Marxian literature of class theory into feminist conceptions of gender, sociological, psychoanalytic and
psychological ideas. He associated the recent anorexia as a modern disease to the hysteria of ancient women.
Beyond his multi-perspectives, he made an eye on the race and class characteristics of AN. According to him,
although Marxism did not consider an
other perspectives by He tried to look at AN through this understanding of a
multidisciplinary study. Women are ten times more likely to have AN. Fraad argued that AN feeds on the
capitalist system itself. He considers AN as a modern symptom, giving women a chance for resisting the feudal,
ancient or communal value systems which women used to share through their domestic work and which keep
them outside of the capitalist system.
2.5. Feminist approach
Men were serious (they wore dark colours and little ornamentation) women were frivilous (they wore light
pastel colors, ribbons, laces and bows); men were active (their colthes allowed them movement); men were
strong (their clothes emphasized broad chests and shoulders), women delicate (their clothing accentuated
small waists, sloping shoulders, and softly rounded silhouette). (Roberts, 1977, p. 555)
Feminist theorists expressed that the female body was used to be considered just as an object, like sexual
object highlighting how it appeared to the others or object of being inspite of an action, while the male body as a
real part of the living process. man is what he eats, woman
as a symbol of her character (Turner, 1973, p. 190). Women
, while men were characterized in
the frame might illustrate why men always
and why women tried to seem less through reckless fasting. Cash and Brown (1989) found
that young women were more appearance-oriented, whereas young men were more fitness-oriented.
Feminist theorists; Kim Chernin, Allie Glenny, Susan Bordo, Leslie Heywood, Mara Selvini-Palazolli
focussed on the mind-body split while saying that anorexia, through fasting and exercising, more than being a
disease, was a way to demonstrate that the body was not the real self. The disease could be counted as the real
torture that the patient exercised over her/his body. The mind and body had been scrutinized/ entreated by both
Plato and Aristo philosophic
, p. 103).
Susan Bordo wrote that the -
uncontained desire, unrestrained hunger, uncontrolled impulse" (Bordo, 1993, p. 189).

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Zeynep Ekin Bal and Muge Caroline Dikencik / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 82 (2013) 492 – 495
Bordo cited three axes corresponding to the basis of anorexia: the dualist axis, the control axis, and the
gender/power axis. In the dualist axis, she pointed out a continuity from Plato to anorexia as a complete modern
phenomenon concerning the view that modernity created an internal spirit-body dichotomy. However, the idea
following the Greco- Christian traditions of dualism
According to that, persons with anorexia would have to be the way to liberate the spirit from
iberation
(Plato, 1981). Bordo (1993) said: "The body is viewed as a confinement p. 146). In
the Dualist axis, anorexic person was in battle with her/his body t
, p. 146).
In the case of anorexia, women were always in the focus, because statistically they were ten times more likely
to suffer from anorexia. However, in recent years, the number of men with anorexia nervosa tended to increase:
There has been a 67% increase in the number of men treated for eating disorders in the UK in the last five
2008). The increasing trend of the male eating disorder is an evidence of the fact that the
and male particular experiences. To be more precise,
discussing a social phenomenon in any case was not appropriate for taking from one particular side.
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