As one with years of contact with people with EDs, and a fair measure of experience with their parents as well, I find it difficult and perhaps unwise to stereotype the sufferer’s background. While we all are rightfully looking for answers as to the causality of EDs, at this point in time it seems wisest to look to the broadest range of possibility.
Having said that, I believe that many people with EDs have suffered exactly the same sets of circumstances that Joanna sets forth. Abuse and boundary violations play a huge role in the development of EDs for all too many people.
Yet how are we to explain the fact that given the same set of circumstances, some people will develop an ED while others will not ? The explanation would seem to indicate that temperament plays a larger role than those who seek to narrow things down may currently acknowledge, and may exert such a strong influence that children may develop EDs under "good enough" parenting as well.
Currently there seems to be many different camps when it comes to explaining ED etiology. The recent movement to pooh-pooh and discount the early findings of Hilde Bruch is one example of this, even in the face of some suffers who come from exactly the backgrounds Bruch described.
Expensive private residential treatment programs seem particularly prone to the currently popular “The Parents are never to blame" position. Yet when it is parents who are asked pay the sort of fees such places often demand, such institutional positions can all too easily be seen as self-serving rather than evidence-based. All one has to do is listen to the horror stories from the childhoods of some sufferers to understand that stating this position is professionally irresponsible and without basis in fact.
At the same time, many people with EDs appear to come from authentically loving and conscientious homes. The range of backgrounds for people with EDs seems a wide one.
My sense is that every single one of the various etiological stances will find validity in certain individual cases, and that when it comes to producing an all-encompassing theory of ED development one is wise to remain open-minded, and not cleave too closely to any particular stance.
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As one with years of contact with people with EDs, and a fair measure of experience with their parents as well, I find it difficult and perhaps unwise to stereotype the sufferer’s background. While we all are rightfully looking for answers as to the causality of EDs, at this point in time it seems wisest to look to the broadest range of possibility.
Having said that, I believe that many people with EDs have suffered exactly the same sets of circumstances that Joanna sets forth. Abuse and boundary violations play a huge role in the development of EDs for all too many people.
Yet how are we to explain the fact that given the same set of circumstances, some people will develop an ED while others will not ? The explanation would seem to indicate that temperament plays a larger role than those who seek to narrow things down may currently acknowledge, and may exert such a strong influence that children may develop EDs under "good enough" parenting as well.
Currently there seems to be many different camps when it comes to explaining ED etiology. The recent movement to pooh-pooh and discount the early findings of Hilde Bruch is one example of this, even in the face of some suffers who come from exactly the backgrounds Bruch described.
Expensive private residential treatment programs seem particularly prone to the currently popular “The Parents are never to blame" position. Yet when it is parents who are asked pay the sort of fees such places often demand, such institutional positions can all too easily be seen as self-serving rather than evidence-based. All one has to do is listen to the horror stories from the childhoods of some sufferers to understand that stating this position is professionally irresponsible and without basis in fact.
At the same time, many people with EDs appear to come from authentically loving and conscientious homes. The range of backgrounds for people with EDs seems a wide one.
My sense is that every single one of the various etiological stances will find validity in certain individual cases, and that when it comes to producing an all-encompassing theory of ED development one is wise to remain open-minded, and not cleave too closely to any particular stance.
June 3, 2009 - 9:11pmThis Comment
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