Starvation and other signs will complete the picture before long. There is great confusion in the literature about classification and differential diagnosis among the various eating disorders. But there is nothing else in the entire psychopathology that will contain these two features, as they exist in anorexia. Lack of appetite comes late into the picture. Hence, hardly can we speak of eating disorders.
Food is the symbol around which the illness develops.
The matter of symptom choice is a subject that has not been clearly deciphered in psychiatry. One may hypothesize that there are certain fixation points in infancy that predispose the individual towards this type of symptom-formation. Indeed we observe problems in all these areas. In the intrapsychic sphere we see profound problems in object relations and in the separation-individuation process. The oral phase of psychosexual development is the prototype for the mechanisms of identity that are to crystallize in late adolescence.