The chief symptom is shocking: self-starvation leading to a devastating weight loss. The treatment is difficult, the cure elusive, and facts about the disease are not well known. Yet anorexia nervosa, an illness that was once quite rare, now afflicts increasing numbers of adolescents.
In The Golden Cage, a renowned psychiatrist-recognized as one of the world's leading authorities on anorexia nervosa-relates her experience and discoveries in dealing with this baffling disorder. It is not, as the name implies, simply a loss of appetite. Rather, it involves a relentless pursuit of excessive thinness, undertaken despite continual hunger, acute pain, and occasionally fatal consequences. Dr. Bruch uses numerous examples from her own case studies to give a vivid picture of the causes, effects, and possible treatment of the disease. Her main concern: how can the symptoms be detected before they become entrenched as anorexia?
The victims of anorexia are mostly adolescent and preadolescent girls who have otherwise been model children from "good homes." Often they feel trapped by unattainable goals and expectations-a golden cage of privilege where they feel they do not belong and cannot survive. Dr. Bruch's experience has convinced her that early diagnosis is essential to any treatment of anorexia, and her book is addressed "to physicians, teachers, school counselors, and parents-to all who are in a position of observing these youngsters before a chronic and often irreversible state develops."
Hilde Bruch is Professor of Psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine and is the author of numerous articles and books, including Eating Disorders. Her latest book, Learning Psychotherapy: Rationale and Ground Rules, was published by Harvard University Press.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A must read for any parent with a mentally ill daughter,
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This review is from: Golden Cage: The Enigma of Anorexia Nervosa (Mass Market Paperback)
A remarkable description of the basic personality and family mechanisms involved in teenage mental disorders and their anorectic expression.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not just,
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This review is from: The Golden Cage: The Enigma of Anorexia Nervosa, with a New Foreword by Catherine Steiner-Adair, Ed.D. (Paperback)
This book was extremely informative about the underlying causes of eating disorders. It gave me a better understanding for how they can develop in the home, how parental pressures at a young age can have a huge influence, and also supports the fact that you don't have to have a tragic up bringing to be subject to an eating disorder.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
descriptive account of anorexia nervosa,
By medicine woman "shrink" (Hackensack, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Golden Cage: The Enigma of Anorexia Nervosa (Mass Market Paperback)
empathic portrayal of anorexia nervosa by a pioneer in the field; it has human descriptives of everything characterized scientifically in textbooks and journals.
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