Disorder

Some phenomenologists use Edith Stein’s theory for analyzing the phenomenon called ‘eating disorder’. Others use Edmund Husserl’s or contemporary scholars’, such as Matthew Ratcliffe’s, analyses. Often these authors argue that it is the body image that changes and causes the disorder.

Often, these scholars do not seem to grasp the whole picture.

Of course, the perversion of one’s body image is one aspect of the disorder. But, the perversion is far from sufficient for creating a disorder. And sometimes, no perversion takes place at all, like in the case of my friend, who did not even think about his body but just unlearned how to eat.

I do think sometimes that my body is bigger than it actually is, and I am always surprised when someone tells me that I am skinny or “thin,” as one of my friends said. “You are like a crain,” he said. “Thin and white and beautiful” (I was wearing a white dress. Also, later the same friend told me that my other friend likes to talk to me because I’m “a pretty girl,” not because I would be an interesting person. That bastard is so childish, and after a few days away from him, I realize that he wasn’t that nice after all. He was very friendly to me, but I guess that the reason for this was that for him, I was just ‘a pretty girl’, not a friend. For me, he was one of the best friends I had during the three-week stay in Italy. Well, I do have my memories, and it seems that thanks to his childish behavior, I do not have any obligations to stay in contact.) Sometimes, however, I am very well aware of my skinny appearance, and only a year ago, when I was 7 kg skinnier, I was embarrassed of my skeleton-like body.

I do not know what has perverted in me. It is not fully myself, who tells me that I should be skinny and eat less. However, I am not passive, either. I do take action, but my actions are guided by several different patterns that sometimes are contradictory. I do not wish to be skinny, and still I want to be. I want to eat well and enough, but still I cannot buy enough food for myself. I feel stupid for not being able to take care of myself in the way adults should, and yet I am proud for eating as little as possible. As Derrida says, one is not identical with oneself, and I definitely feel that in telling myself contradictory sentences.

Heidegger’s analyses are not often used for analyzing bodily matters. However, even if he in his own words “did not know how to approach the question of the body” (Zollikon Seminars), in my opinion his idea of the middle voice would provide an important insight about how eating disorders are experienced.

I think about Heidegger’s ‘middle voice’ when I find myself in situations where I am the agent but cannot say that I am fully in charge of what is happening. The disorder takes place in me. I do not really have it and it does not rule over me, but like language, the disorder provides a framework for my actions. Like the language is the “house of being” (Letter on Humanism), eating disorder is the ‘house of my being.’ This house is not fixed but is rather like one under a constant construction and with endless amounts of rooms. Still, it has the walls that limit the ways one can go.

This house does not provide pure consuming-related enjoyment. I did not eat a single gelato during the three weeks of collegium in Italy. I told others that I don’t like sweet food, which is true but not in the sense they would think. I do not like sweet food, because it makes me anxious, not because I would not simply like the taste of it. I love ice cream (vegan), but I only can have it in small amounts and not too often. I guess that this is healthy in some way, but the reason for me not to eat ice cream is not as healthy as it could be.

The disorder is part of the environment that provides me the possibilities of action. Just as the paths that always already exist for me, the disorder provides certain routes to follow. I can have a beer or ice cream or eat a piece of bread, and these possibilities are mutually exclusive for me. I cannot open new possibilities for myself by myself but the possibilities are opened either by the cafeteria personnel, my partner, or by someone else preparing a meal for me. In Italy, I had dinner every day, and I have never eaten so much pasta (a full plate) so often (almost every day) in my life (I guess I did not gain any weight, nevertheless, because I ate as light lunches as possible.)

I experience the eating disorder as always already there. It takes place in me in the way that it unfolds itself in me in the situations where food or any calories are involved. It is there all the time but is revealed only when I have to think of food. Sometimes the situation forces itself on me. That is called ‘hunger’ or ‘dinner party’.

In the same way, healing surprises me, even if I do actively promote my own healing. In the same way, the backlashes of the disorder take place: I realize that I cannot buy or take certain foods or big amounts at once. This annoys me, but I cannot really do anything. The possibilities have become narrow. Luckily, today, I felt new possibilities and bought a Laugenstange (a salty bun made of brezel dough, very tasty, reminds me of Tübingen) and even a small radler after I had wandered all over Vienna with a 10 kg back bag. I was very happy about being able to buy these things!

The food therapist in the university health care center could not understand why I cannot just eat more. “It’s like going to swim in the sea, you just have to force yourself into the cold water, while knowing that when you get there, you feel fine and happy,” she told me. I tried to explain her that forcing myself just makes me more anxious, and even if I could eat more one time, the anxiety causes three following days with less than 1000 calories per day. She could not understand how this is possible or how I have stayed alive and even be relatively healthy. I told her that I very much try to take action for my healing, but I am not fully in charge of my situation. If I were, I would not have the disorder.

And still the disorder does not appear to me as dis-order in contrast to order but precisely as the order of my life. There is no other situation in me providing comparison. I only know the comparison by concluding that others have different possibilities for their action. For example, I see others ordering pizza, when the only possibilities on the menu for me are a light salad or a vegetable soup.

Even if the disorder does not appear to me as a dis-order in itself, it makes my everyday life complicated. The disorder thus appears to me as an anxiety about having to eat food that I am afraid of (fatty pasta or ice cream, for example), difficulties at grocery stores, lies that I have to tell others in order to hide my situation, etc. The disorder makes me respond in a certain way to my own body and to the consumption-situations. It is the responding where the eating disorder unfolds.

After all, I am getting better. I bought a radler for myself today, which would have been impossible still a year ago. I also have gained 7 kg since the last year, although, I might have lost some weight during the three weeks in Italy, because none of my best friends nor my partner were there. Even though I am nowadays able to eat when others are around me but do not eat with me (having a solitary lunch at the university cafeteria, for example, which is a new experience for me), I still need someone to organize the meals, because otherwise I do not eat enough. I do not torture myself with hunger anymore (a more passive alternative to cutting oneself), but I do not know how much food is enough. I do not know how to respond to new possibilities, because I still have the old patterns of action. As always, the ways of responding are learned, and I am learning to eat again.