Psychiatry as social ordering: anorexia nervosa, a paradigm.
From a psychiatric perspective, anorexia nervosa (hereafter referred to as 'anorexia') is an enigmatic illness. This paper attempts to explain why this is so, describing anorexia as a western cultural phenomenon whose psychiatric explanations and treatments actually participate in the sociocultural processes that inform this syndrome. Anorexia reveals a form of contemporary control over the female body, and psychiatry, as a western discipline, institutionalizes a mind-over-body (objective) ideology that is part of this project. Various psychiatric theories of anorectic etiology and their corresponding methods of treatment are analyzed in this light, and a general framework for understanding the discipline of psychiatry as a mode of social control is offered.
Gremillion
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Department of Anthropology, Stanford University, CA 94305-2145.
D000856:Anorexia Nervosa / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000208:ethnology* / Q000209:etiology; D001294:Attitude to Health / Q000208:ethnology; D001521:Behavior Therapy; D003466:Cultural Characteristics; D005008:Ethnopsychology; D005260:Female; D005783:Gender Identity; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D011209:Power, Psychological; D011570:Psychiatry / Q000592:standards*; D011574:Psychoanalytic Theory; D011613:Psychotherapy; D012926:Social Control, Formal / Q000379:methods*; D012962:Sociology, Medical