The sense of self in anorexia-nervosa patients: a psychoanalytically informed method for studying self-representation.

This paper has two purposes: to study a central psychological feature of anorexia nervosa, the disturbed sense of self, and to demonstrate the utility of an empirical research method to explore a psychoanalytic concept such as self-representation. The aim of the study was to distinguish the sense of self of anorexia-nervosa patients from that of other psychiatric patients, as well as from non-patients. We obtained open-ended self-descriptions, which provide access to self-representations, from 77 young women between the ages of 14 and 24 who made up three groups-anorexia-nervosa patients (n = 15), control psychiatric patients (n = 15), and control non-patients (n = 48).