Women's constructions of childhood trauma and anorexia nervosa

a qualitative meta-synthesis

Jennifer Malecki

Paul Rhodes

Jane Ussher

pp. 231-248

in: Human Arenas 1 (3), 2018.

Abstract

A meta-synthesis was conducted to explore women's constructions of anorexia nervosa and childhood trauma. Following a systematic review of the literature, six studies were isolated and synthesized within a material-discursive-intrapsychic framework to produce five taxonomies: "objectified and controlled bodies," "the abject body," "embodied emotions and self-harm," "medicalizing the body-as-object," and "embodied meanings and new possibilities." The women's experience of anorexia, their bodies, and shifting subjectivities was a response to the materiality of childhood abuse. The women discursively constructed anorexia nervosa as a means of negotiating bodily distress associated with trauma and renegotiating their identities to produce a cohesive, embodied self. This meta-synthesis has implications for further research that elucidates how women make meaning from the transformations of their embodied subjectivities.