Volume 33, Number 1 · January 30, 1986
By Love Possessed
By Norman Cohn
Holy Anorexia
by Rudolph M. Bell, epilogue by William N. Davis
University of Chicago Press, 248 pp., $22.50
Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy
by Judith C. Brown
Oxford University Press, 214 pp., $14.95
It was only around 1870 that anorexia nervosa came to be recognized as a specific disorder and was given the name by which it is known today. Yet according to the psychiatrist William N. Davis, who has supplied an epilogue to Holy Anorexia, it has now reached such proportions that throughout the United States and Western Europe there are countless organizations devoted to assisting anorectics and their families. The psychiatric profession struggles with the disorder—by psychoanalysis, by behavior therapy, by group psychotherapy, by family therapy, by various medications, even by forced feeding regimens. The struggle is often in vain: although many anorectics do partially recover, and some recover completely, many others either lapse into a chronic and desperate condition or else simply die. Reported mortality rates range from 10 to 20 percent—which is higher than for any other psychiatric disorder.
Review, 3260 words
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