Abstract

In this interdisciplinary talk, I will put forward the idea that eating disorders are best conceptualised as disorders of bodily self-regulation and more specifically the ability to regulate one’s adiposity in the service of long-term and conflictual energy risks and goals. Self concepts (e.g. self-esteem, self-efficacy, self-objectification) have long being associated with eating disorders but there is hardly any understanding about how such higher-order self concepts may relate to the neurobiology of disordered eating.  In this talk I will ground these concepts to more fundamental mechanisms of embodied selfhood and mentalisation and I will present developmental and adult, behavioural and neurobiological data on an individual’s sense of their own body relies on how they built active, inferences about the physiological state of their body, which in turns relies on early ‘affectively contingent’ social experiences of feeding and caregiving. I will describe how deficits in this process of embodied mentalisation in disorders such as restrictive Anorexia Nervosa results in a profound, ‘intolerable uncertainty’ about being able to allostatically regulate the body’s adiposity and other homeostatic needs, which in turn results in rigid behavioural eating restrictions as the only active way to feel a sense of ‘control’ and ‘efficacy’ over one’s own body. 

About the speaker

Katerina Fotopoulou, Katlab