ANALYSING ANOREXIA NERVOSA: DIGITAL LOGIC PROVIDES ALTERNATIVE MEANINGS OF ITS NATURE, LEADING TO ALTERNATIVE FORMS OF PSYCHOTHERAPY

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to apply innovative analogue and digital thinking processes that, first, negate DSM (III to 5 th Eds.) understandings of anorexia, and then formulate a bases which encapsulates alternative understandings of the universal patterns of behavior, understandings that honour and embrace the patterns of behavior expressed by each person. Published research of lived experiences of persons who exhibit patterns of behavior and attitudes towards food, weight, body shape and size, that are deemed to be diagnostic criteria of anorexia nervosa, provides evidence that those patterns of behavior serve as coping mechanisms against the suffocating forces of unwanted, specific, and personal discourses in their lives. As a consequence of this application, the article argues that these universal patterns of behavior and attitudes to food, weight and body image, expressed uniquely by each person, are expressions, images and ideas of a specific form of an archetype, with each person having their personal and unique reasons for their behavioral expressions. This analyses indicates that these persons do not “suffer from” a mental eating disorder called anorexia, and that psychotherapeutic approaches for each person should focus on the problems in their lives, problems that cause them to express the images and ideas of a universal archetype.