We chose anorexia as a clinical field to elucidate what particularizes the contemporary neurotic way of relating to objects. Based on a theoretical-conceptual survey on anorexia in Freud and Lacan’s psychoanalysis, we find that anorexia is mostly defined as an inscription in the literalness of the body, of the lack that makes desire move towards hysteria. That psychopathology of the oral drive circuit refers to a precarious defensive response to an Other who is fragile in his symbolic function that transmits castration. We revisit and discuss this interpretation in the light of the features of today’s society, highlighting the incidence — in contemporary neuroses — of a phantasmatic position inclined toward the logic of the unsatisfied consumer and the banal denial of symbolic authority.
Anorexia; psychoanalysis; contemporary neuroses; denial