Disorders in Social Relationships: The Case of Anorexia and Bulimia

Mental health problems implicitly and particularly pose questions about the tensions of the social world. Anorexia nervosa and bulimia, two eating disorders, are conceptualised in this article as exposing the social tensions particularly affecting young girls, and more frequently those from the middle and upper social classes. Why are these three structuring characteri stics of social position—female sex, comfortable social milieu, and “youth”—interpretable in terms of social relations, and are they thus closely intertwined in these syndromes? Their configuration in eating disorders is atypical among health inequalities that more usually affect those from the poorer and older groups in the population. The sociological examination of these disorders shows that their foundations are not based on excessive conformity with the norms and values that would be expected of girls of the upper classes but have more to do with a “pathological use” of the norms of excellence in response to the tensions encountered at this age.