"Thank God I can throw up, otherwise I'd die": symptoms of bulimia and psychoanalytic clinic at a public hospital

Abstract

Manuals of classification and diagnosis are highly objective when describing the etiology, differential diagnosis and treatment for persons suffering from the so-called eating disorders. But whereas medicine as a science must seek generalizations, psychoanalysis has the unconscious as its field of research and the subject as an effect of language. This paper deals with issues based on observations of preliminary interviews in a clinical case where the symptom of bulimia was present. The observations refer to specific aspects of the symptom in psychoanalysis, the radical difference between the concepts of "instinct" and "drive" and the particular production of knowledge in psychoanalysis.

Psychoanalisys; medicine; symptom; bulimia nervosa