Bulimia is uncontrollable attacks of acute insatiable hunger, which turns a person into a pathologically eating animal, stuffing itself with food until “it bursts.” This phenomenon causes enormous harm to both the body and psyche. It destroys health, a healthy sense of self, and, as a result, destroys relationships. That is why bulimia is one of the most common requests for psychotherapy. Let's look at the definition. Wikipedia: Bulimia nervosa (from the Greek βοжς - bull and λСμМς - hunger, also wolf hunger, kinorexia) - an eating disorder characterized by repeated bouts of overeating and excessive preoccupation with controlling body weight, which leads a person to take extreme measures designed to reduce the impact of what he eats on body weight. Bulimia is characterized by three main signs: Overeating (that is, uncontrolled consumption of food in large quantities quantity). Regular use of methods designed to influence body weight and figure, such as cleansing the gastrointestinal tract (inducing vomiting, laxative abuse), strict dieting or fasting, exhausting exercise. Excessive dependence of self-esteem on figure and weight body. Food, eating is not only a way for the body to obtain nutrients, not only one of the ways to spend time and have fun. It is also the first experience of human relationships. The mother breastfeeds the baby, thus showing her love and care. For an infant, the need for food and care and the need for relationships are essentially the same thing. With various pathologies of growing up, food may remain a subject of relationships for a person. This can happen in cases where the mother overinvests in feeding the child to the detriment of others forms of contact, or when mother and child fail to build object relationships and they remain only functions for each other. And so on... As a result, relationships with food become for such a child a variant of object relations, or even the only way to realize them. Attacks of bulimia are generally considered a way to combat feelings of inner emptiness and loneliness, abandonment. A way to get confirmation that you are loved (I’m full, that means my mother loves me). And therapy is carried out accordingly. And it doesn’t always help... Apparently, it’s worth assuming that the cause of bulimia may not only be a lack of love, the inability to receive it in another way. And food can be not only a way to “rock yourself to sleep,” to calm down, “sitting in your mother’s arms.” What could be the matter? When a child is breastfed by a mother overwhelmed by the death drive (overly aggressive or depressed, or suicidal, or flooded with anxiety...) - the child is “filled” with the same attraction. When a mother feeds a child not because she wants to feed him with love and care, but so that he falls asleep and shuts up, falls behind, leaves him alone, lets him live his life (in fact, he dies ) – food becomes a way of symbolic murder. And then food becomes a way to be filled with death. Cause pain, harm, destroy yourself. And then attacks of bulimia should be interpreted as suicidal impulses. Or as a replacement for known pain (overeating) - another pain, mental, unbearable to process. Or, if the child was used throughout childhood as a container for maternal aggression towards other family members, processed it and was filled with guilt for his feelings - then bulimia, as an opportunity to be overwhelmed and feel guilt for it, will be a way to remain in the usual emotional structure. Agree, this radically changes the therapeutic task, the primary task becomes working with aggression, labeling it, legalizing it, finding new ways to process it.