René Girard and the Mimetic Nature of Eating Disorders

• Published in: Culture, medicine and psychiatry Vol. 42; no. 3; pp. 552 - 583
• Main Author: Strand, Mattias
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.09.2018; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Anorexia; Anthropological models; Anthropology; Bulimia; Clinical Psychology; Consumption; Desire; Disorders; Eating disorders; Girard; Medicin och hälsovetenskap; Mental disorders; Modernity; Original Paper; Psychiatry; Public Health; Scapegoating; Social comparison; Social Sciences; Sociology; Anorexia nervosa; René Girard; Bulimia nervosa; Eating disorders
• ISSN: 0165-005X; 1573-076X; 1573-076X
• DOI: 10.1007/s11013-018-9574-y

French historian and literary critic René Girard (1923–2015), most widely known for the concepts of mimetic desire and scapegoating, also engaged in the discussion of the surge of eating disorders in his 1996 essay Eating Disorders and Mimetic Desire . This article explores Girard’s ideas on the mimetic nature and origin of eating disorders from a clinical psychiatric perspective and contextualizes them within the field of eating disorders research as well as in relation to broader psychological, sociological and anthropological models of social comparison and non-consumption. Three main themes in Girard’s thinking on the topic of eating disorders are identified and explored: the ‘end of prohibitions’ as a driving force in the emergence of eating disorders, eating disorders as a phenomenon specific to modernity, and the significance of ‘conspicuous non-consumption’ in the emergence of eating disorders.