“Ghosts at the banquet” - Scholarly Commons Home

unconscious death that lives at this developmental stage and says, at a level of
psychopathology Anorexia Nervosa is construed as a “phobic avoidance
disorder” (p. 249). The phobic objects are described as normal body weight
and shape seen as becoming fat. For those clients who face anorexia at the
developmental stage of adolescence, the anorexia may be a desire to maintain
a subpubertal body weight in the face of impending puberty. Crisp describes
this as a major and unavoidable life event , our “first brush with the full extent
of the real world and personal mortality”, and says even though a client may
show a degree of trust in accepting treatment, therapeutic interventions run the
risk of being perceived as “invasive, persecutory and destructive” (p.270).
While Crisp sees this as an unconscious response to life’s transitions, it seems
Farber et al. (2007) are more focused on the anorexic person’s preoccupation
with death. Others such as Warren (1997) would look to ask of the meaning
behind the behaviour. How does the behaviour reflect an attempt to deal with
the anorexic person’s world? Warren raises the counter argument to Farber et
al. (2007) and Jackson & Davidson (1986) in stating that the theme of death
may be salient in some cases, but that in others, feelings of powerlessness or
thwarted growth to selfhood is more prominent. This tone, the threat to life,
continues to permeate such descriptions of treatment and therapeutic
approaches with the anorexic client.
The Dialectic Structure of Life-Death
The dialectical structure of opposing forces and concepts such as life and
death, ties with what Ogden (1992) and others discuss as the dynamic
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