Outline and Evaluate Psychological Explanations for one eating disorder
Outline and Evaluate Psychological Explanations for one eating disorder
The psychodynamic approach suggests unconscious conflicts from childhood may be the reason for an eating disorder. As adolescent girls are most likely to have the disorder, it suggests that anorexia might be due to fear of increasing sexual desires and starvation is a way to avoid becoming pregnant because one of the symptoms of anorexia nervosa is the absence of a menstrual cycle.
Another psychodynamic explanation suggests anorexia is a way to stop sexual development because the anorexic has an unconscious desire to remain pre-pubescent. Their weight loss prevents them from developing the body shape associated with adult females, and therefore allows them to preserve the illusion that they are still children.
It is also suggested that anorexia is a result of parental conflicts because these are reduced by the need to attend to the anorexic child.
Family conflicts may be a result of having a family member suffering with an eating disorder, and so may be an effect rather than a cause, however, many families have conflicts but this does not necessarily result in abnormality, nor does it explain why the disorders occur in women more than men.
Generalisability is an issue because the psychodynamic explanations based on sexual development only relate to adolescent girls so it is gender and age bias as the explanations only focus on anorexia occurring in adolescent girls, so explanations cannot explain anorexia in boys or adults.
According to the cognitive approach, people with eating disorders have a distorted view of their own body image and what an ideal body image should look like. They place too much importance on their weight and usually overestimate their body size. People with eating disorder also have a desired body size that is smaller than it is for healthy women.
Perfectionism involves the individual having impossibly high standards for themselves and individuals high in perfectionism
The psychodynamic approach suggests unconscious conflicts from childhood may be the reason for an eating disorder. As adolescent girls are most likely to have the disorder, it suggests that anorexia might be due to fear of increasing sexual desires and starvation is a way to avoid becoming pregnant because one of the symptoms of anorexia nervosa is the absence of a menstrual cycle.
Another psychodynamic explanation suggests anorexia is a way to stop sexual development because the anorexic has an unconscious desire to remain pre-pubescent. Their weight loss prevents them from developing the body shape associated with adult females, and therefore allows them to preserve the illusion that they are still children.
It is also suggested that anorexia is a result of parental conflicts because these are reduced by the need to attend to the anorexic child.
Family conflicts may be a result of having a family member suffering with an eating disorder, and so may be an effect rather than a cause, however, many families have conflicts but this does not necessarily result in abnormality, nor does it explain why the disorders occur in women more than men.
Generalisability is an issue because the psychodynamic explanations based on sexual development only relate to adolescent girls so it is gender and age bias as the explanations only focus on anorexia occurring in adolescent girls, so explanations cannot explain anorexia in boys or adults.
According to the cognitive approach, people with eating disorders have a distorted view of their own body image and what an ideal body image should look like. They place too much importance on their weight and usually overestimate their body size. People with eating disorder also have a desired body size that is smaller than it is for healthy women.
Perfectionism involves the individual having impossibly high standards for themselves and individuals high in perfectionism