Also Parents who Only Mean Well Can Give their Children Eating Disorders
Investigations of the childhood of people with eating disorders does not
indicate that they have been seriously neglected. Ordinary terms like
"lack of love" do not help us to understand their problems. Those details
which can be found are often very subtle.
The determining factor is whether the reaction to the child's needs was
suitable or was only what the parents wrongly thought was the case.
Something has gone wrong in those processes of experience and behaviour
which surrounded the handling of food and other bodily needs. Initial
faulty and confusing experiences have interfered with their ability to
recognize hunger and satisfaction and to separate hunger (the desire to
eat) from other unpleasant signals which did not have anything to do with
lack of food, and from emotional stress caused by many different conflicts
and problems.