[Psychogenic eating disorders and the family set-up]

The paper examines the position of dysorexic patients within the family set-up, a topic on with until now attention has not been focused, in order to highlight the latter's possible importance since it has been overlooked in favour of the situation of the "fusion family" in which parent-child relations are predominant. The paper underlines the frequency of a subordinate position in relation to "strong" older brothers or sisters. There is no possibility of compensating this feeling of inferiority which therefore conditions the choice of a fictitious goal: regressive and guilty gratification in bulimia and hypecontrol of the body in anorexia.