For a child, solipsistic by nature, there are limits to the ways that despair can be communicated. Culture shapes the scripts that expressions of distress will follow. In both anorexia and resignation syndrome, children embody anger and a sense of powerlessness by refusing food, one of the few methods of protest available to them. Experts tell these children that they are behaving in a recognizable way that has a label. The children then make adjustments, conscious and unconscious, to the way they’ve been classified. Over time, a willed pattern of behavior becomes increasingly involuntary and
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