Bruch, a psychoanalyst known as “Lady Anorexia,” began writing about anorexia in the sixties, when the illness was obscure. She hypothesized that novelty was essential to the disease, which she described as a “blind search for a sense of identity and selfhood.” She predicted (inaccurately) that, once a critical mass of girls became anorexic, the incidence of the illness might decrease, because it would no longer feel special. “The illness used to be the accomplishment of an isolated girl who felt she had found her own way to salvation,” she wrote. “Each one was, in a way, an original inventor
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