Giovanni Castellini

 

Eating disorders and gender dysphoria can be conceptualized as psychopathological conditions of post-modernity, mirroring the transformations of our society and the differences between cultures across the world. They both move from a crisis of the taken for granted self-identity. Furthermore, from a phenomenological perspective, the clinical manifestations are based on a disorder of lived corporeality. In this sense. The present paper is theoretically grounded in the field of the phenomenological concepts of lived body (Leib) and physical body (Koerper).

Furthermore, I took into consideration the Sartrean dimension of livedbody-for-others, which is related to the experience of the revelation that body can be an object for the other. In both eating disorders and gender dysphoria, the external reality of the body and the inner subjective perception do not match, and the harmonious relationships between the internal representation of the body and the body itself has not been achieved, which results in a consequent feeling of estrangement within itself.

In both these conditions, the main psychological disturbances are impairments in overall identity development and the failure to establish multiple and diverse domains of self-definition, especially in the crucial period of adolescence. The questions about the body are intimately related to the nature of relationships with others, the degree to which we are coherent with others. In other words, they concern the issue of distinctiveness. In finding the answers to these questions, adolescents build a sense of self and mark their own identities in a way that makes sense to themselves.

 

eating disorders, gender dysphoria, lived corporeality, identity construction

 

 

Received on September 30, 2017

Accepted on October 09, 2017

Firstly published online on January 17, 2018