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Introduction: Anorexia and the Spirit of the Times
- Michigan State University Press
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xv Introduction: Anorexia and the Spirit of the Times Mark R. Anspach There are fashions even in the manner of suffering . . . —André Gide The fashion is one of weighing victims. —René Girard Thin is in, stout is out.1 It was not always so. In 1911, French physician Francis Heckel wrote that his patients sometimes resisted losing weight, preferring to “stay obese for reasons of fashionable appearance.” The need to have an “impressive décolleté” made every woman feel “duty-bound” to fatten the upper part of her body, from the neck to the breasts, which could not be done without gaining weight elsewhere. xvi If health reasons obliged a woman to reduce her abdomen, she would have to accept losing weight higher up. This was a “true sacrifice,” emphasized Heckel, for it meant renouncing “what the world considers beautiful.”2 A passage of the celebrated treatise on dream interpretation published a few years earlier by a Viennese psychiatrist confirms that slimness was not yet, in that era, the supreme criterionoffemininebeauty.SigmundFreudquotesafemale patient’s account of a dream she had about food: I wanted to give a supper-party, but I had nothing in the house but a little smoked salmon. I thought I would go out and buy something, but remembered then that it was Sunday afternoon and all the shops would be shut. Next I tried to ring up some caterers, but the telephone was out of order. So I had to abandon my wish to give a supper-party.3 Inthecourseoftheanalyticsession,Freudlearnsthatthepatienthadjustpaidavisittoawomanfriendwhosefavoritedish was salmon. The patient’s husband always praised this friend, xvii which made the patient jealous. “Fortunately,” Freud noted, “this friend of hers is very skinny and thin and her husband admires a plumper figure.” The patient would therefore have had little cause for worry, if the thin friend had not spoken of herdesiretofattenup,inquiring:“Whenareyougoingtoask us to another meal? You always feed one so well.” This statementallowsFreudtoexplaintohispatientthemeaningofthe dream:“Itisjustasthoughwhenshemadethissuggestionyou saidtoyourself:‘Alikelything!I’mtoaskyoutocomeandeat inmyhousesothatyoumaygetstoutandattractmyhusband still more! I’d rather never give another supper-party.’”4 But Freud adds that this dream also lends itself to “anotherandsubtlerinterpretation .”Thepatientwishedthather friend’sdesire,thatofbecomingstout,shouldnotbefulfilled; butinherdream,itisadesireofherownthatgoesunfulfilled. ThisindicatestoFreudthatthepatienthadputherselfinher friend’s place, or, in other terms, “that she had ‘identified’ herself with her friend.”5 Thus, while the first interpretation brings to light a rivalry between the patient and her friend, the second, “subtler” interpretation posits an identification between the two. xviii A rivalry between two persons who identify with each other is precisely what René Girard calls a mimetic rivalry. For Girard, there is nothing strange about discovering an identificationbetweenrivals.Onthecontrary,themoreone individual puts him or herself in the place of another and imitates that person, the more likely it is that competition willdevelop,especiallyiftheimitationextendstotherealmof desire:twopersonswhodesirethesamething—forinstance, a plump figure to please men—are apt to become rivals. Girard explains anorexia as the extreme result of an analogous mimetic rivalry playing itself out, not between two persons only but on the scale of an entire society. In this way, Girard sets himself squarely against all interpretations, psychoanalytic or otherwise, that locate the source of the problemintheunconsciousoftheindividual—forexample, the theories that invoke “a refusal of normal sexuality.” Why seeksomehiddenmotivebehindtheanorexic’sdesiretolose weight, Girard asks, when the truth is that we all want to lose weight? Far from being buried deep in the mind of the patient, the real motive is clearly visible in the spirit of the times. One need only turn on the television or leaf through xix a women’s magazine in order to appreciate the eminently mimetic character of the wish to be thin. Girard sees the rise ofanorexiaasspectacularproofthatimitationconstitutesan increasingly irresistible force in contemporary life. Today,thissameforcewouldmakeFreud’splumppatient covet her friend’s skinnier physique, not necessarily because itwouldbemoreattractivetomen—therearestillhusbands who prefer womanly curves—but because it would better conform to a cultural ideal of feminine beauty. In fact, even if the desire to be sexually attractive is present at the start, mimetic rivalries tend to acquire a life oftheirown.Whensuchrivalriesintensifybeyondacertain threshold, the original objective fades from view until all that remains is the desire to outdo one’s adversary. In the case of anorexia, that means being the skinniest, whatever the cost. Of course, since men are mimetic too, they may well desire thin women—not because they find them intrinsically more attractive, but because they look more like the models of desirable women offered up by movies, television, and advertising. These models define the standard against which...