A phenomenological approach of anorexia nervosa

Introduction: from a phenomenological perspective, anorexic female patients seem to experience difficulties regarding the subjective feeling of their own body (embodiment) and their personal identity, which lead to an intersubjectivity impairment within social interactions. Following these findings, this study investigates the “body-for-others” concept (Sartre, 1943) and altruistic hypotheses from the ethologist Albert Demaret (1973) in a sample of anorexic female patients. Two main hypotheses are tested: anorexic patients are expected to define themselves mostly through the gaze of others and as more altruistic than control participants.

Method: this study included 67 anorexic female patients (based on the DSM-IV criteria) and 246 control female participants. Three self-reported questionnaires were used: the Eating Disorder Inventory: EDI-II of Garner (French version), the Identity and Eating Disorders questionnaire: IDEA of Stanghellini (French version translated and adapted by us) to assess the “body-for-others” concept and 17 complementary items for the altruistic dimension. Mann-Whitney non-parametric tests were used to compare the two groups.

Results: results show that anorexic patients obtain higher scores than the control group for the three questionnaires (p<0,001 for all measurements).

Discussion: the IDEA questionnaire enriches the knowledge relative to the body-self relationship and the first-person perspective, which is essential for a phenomenological approach. Furthermore, the promising results concerning the altruistic dimension in anorexia nervosa should be evaluated in future research. Nevertheless, a better validity of the items assessing the altruistic dimension is needed.