[Eating psychopathology and personality in eating disorders]

The question of how many psychopathologic factors are involved in Anorexia Nervosa (AN) and Bulimia Nervosa (BN) has no definite answer. The combination of psychopathology and personality research may shed a light upon the determinants of eating pathology.

The study consists in the administration of the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) and the Eating Disorder Inventory 2 (EDI-2) to 95 outpatient anorectic women (50 restrictive and 45 binge-purging) and to 92 bulimic outpatient women (78 with and 14 without purging behaviours). The respective scores of each DCA subgroup are compared.

Restricter anorectics are characterised by lower novelty seeking on respect to all the other groups and by a higher self-directedness on respect to bingeing-purging anorectics and purging bulimics. Also psychopathologic differences between restricter anorectics and the other groups are extensive. Bingeing-purging anorexia shares many traits with bulimia.

In their complex, data suggest and in-deep study aimed to a possible re-classification of EDs which would take impulsiveness in greater consideration. The differences in temperament and character traits may partially be responsible of the repression or discontrol of impulsive eating behaviours in different ED subtypes.