A 6-month body-oriented psychotherapeutic intervention project was conducted with a group of seven hospitalized female patients diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa. This intervention worked as a first pilot study integrated into a larger medium-term project, which had as its main goals to collect relevant material on the experiential and semantic levels of the body experience in Anorexia nervosa, as well as on the assessment of the movement characteristics and preferences revealed by the patients. Data collection included movement observation and verbal discourse analysis. The results seem to support some theoretical assumptions and allow the interpretation of empirical findings. On the basis of this study, we propose some considerations and implications for dance/movement therapy intervention with anorectic patients, founded on aesthetic experience and developmental-constructivist perspectives.

For the mainstream Psychology/Psychiatry, anorexia nervosa is considered an eating disorder characterized by the low body weight and by the restrictive eating pattern. The traditional psychiatric treatment consists in the establishment of a meal plan that must be scrupulously followed and, most frequently, in pharmacological treatment. We propose an alternative conceptualization of anorexia nervosa that envisages this disorder as pertaining to the control domain. In this sense, we formulate psychiatric intervention as a “pact with anorexia”, once it follows the very same logic, prohibitions and self-impositions of the disorder. Specifically, we envisage the meal plan as a way of maintaining anorexia, instead of suppressing it. As we could observe in our four year research project, in which we’ve followed several anorectic female patients, those who were more committed to their psychiatric treatment were precisely those who had more difficulty in recovering from anorexia – i.e., from renouncing the control from which the disorder lives. Finally, we suggest some fundamental underpinnings to an effective therapeutic approach, based in our conceptualization and understanding of the disorder.