"Knowing one's self" anorexic: implications for therapeutic practice.
OBJECTIVE
Recent postmodernist studies of anorexia nervosa (AN) challenge current clinical understandings and therapies by illuminating not what AN is but how what it is known to be by clinicians helps construct the disorder and therapy for it. This study points to the equal if not greater importance of how patients know AN.


METHODS
Using a deconstructive approach, the discourses of a group of women diagnosed with severe AN were analyzed to reveal radically different versions of "knowing one's self" anorexic.


RESULTS
These versions of "self" have strategically different implications for, and meanings of, any therapeutic endeavour.


CONCLUSIONS
Postmodernist approaches point to the need for social reconstruction of lay and community understandings of AN. They also have implications at the level of individual therapy, and could be deployed with patients to establish individual but authentic bases for therapy.
Surgenor
Lois J
LJ
Department of Psychological Medicine, Christchurch School of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Otago, Christchurch, New Zealand. lois.surgenor@chmeds.ac.nz
Plumridge
Elizabeth W
EW
Horn
Jacqueline
J
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000856:Anorexia Nervosa / Q000523:psychology* / Q000628:therapy*; D003289:Convalescence; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D011613:Psychotherapy / Q000379:methods; D012649:Self Concept