Explanations of Anorexia

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  • Created by: Sarah
  • Created on: 03-06-13 10:22
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  • Explanations of Anorexia
    • Psychodynamic
      • Unconscious desire to hold off puberty
      • Unconsious fear of growing up sexually
        • Anorexia represents a fear of sexual relationships and maturity.
          • By not eating your body remains childlike so you are not sexually desired by others
            • Remain in this child state you have no sexually worries
              • defence mechanism of regression can be used to help explain this.
    • Learning
      • Operant Conditioning
        • Reinforcement of loosing weigh from others
          • Positive reinforcement(compliment) and negative reinforcement(avoiding bullying)
            • Associate the reward with the behaviour or punishment so you repeat or avoid it.
              • Avoid food brings attention. Not eating it brings a reward and so fasting is reinforced
      • Classical Conditioning
        • Indiivdual decides to loose weight
          • Gain rewards from compliments
            • Due to rewards they fear gaining weight
              • This fear is paired with eating and classical conditioned response occurs
                • The next time they go to eat they feel anxious and to stop that feeling they do not eat
      • Social Learning  Theory
        • Observation of slim role models in media (vicarious reinforcement
          • Imitate role model to obtain same reinforcers or avoid punishments
            • Learn behaviour is successful = being slim and so imitate this
              • role models- same sex, higher status and older
                • ARRM
  • Unconsious fear of growing up sexually
    • Anorexia represents a fear of sexual relationships and maturity.
      • By not eating your body remains childlike so you are not sexually desired by others
        • Remain in this child state you have no sexually worries
          • defence mechanism of regression can be used to help explain this.
  • Hilda Bruch 1975- found mothers of anorexics had trouble anticipating hunger so the child never went hungry

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