Deception in Anorexia Nervosa: An Aspect of The No-Entry System of Defense

As Williams (1997) describes, patients with anorexia nervosa have been on the receiving end of intrusive maternal projections and consequently develop a no-entry system of defense. This paper explores how deception may function as an aspect of this system in two ways. First, deception may serve as a self-preservative effort to evade emotional contact with the maternal object, which is experienced as overflowing with projections, and to attenuate accompanying persecutory anxiety. Second, rumination-painful thoughts, feelings, and sensations-about the deception being discovered by the object leverages the mind's hypnoid capacities to construct an omnipotently generated container for the self that further protects the patient from emotional contact with the maternal object's projections. These ideas are illustrated with a clinical case of a patient with anorexia nervosa who engaged in frequent deception.