The families of 30 eating‐disorder patients were matched with 30 normal control families on social class, family size, and age and sex of the patient. We tested if the age (adolescent or young adult) and the symptomatology of the patient (restricting anorexic, bulimic anorexic, and normal‐weight bulimic) had a significant effect on a behavioral and a self‐report measure of cohesion, adaptability, and conflict. The age of the patient proved to be nonsignificant. The eating‐disorder families showed more stability and discussed less openly disagreements between parents and children. On the remaining family measures, the anorexic (restricting and bulimic) and bulimic families revealed a completely opposite interaction pattern. The anorexic family had interpersonal boundary problems and a stable and conflictavoidant way of interacting, which was experienced as nonconflictual and cohesive by the patient too. The bulimic family showed strong interpersonal boundaries, a less stable organization, and less avoidance of disagreements. The patient herself also described her family as conflictual, uncohesive, and badly organized.

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The convergent and discriminant validity of three operationalizations of the psychosomatic family features--enmeshment, rigidity, overprotectiveness, and lack of conflict resolution, as described by Minuchin and colleagues--are tested in families that include patients with eating disorders, especially anorexia nervosa and bulimia. We redefined the family features as dimensions and measured them with two behavioral methods (direct observation and behavioral product) and a self-report method. The two behavioral methods showed convergent as well as discriminant validity for the intensity of intrafamilial boundaries, the degree of the family's adaptability, and the family's way of handling conflicts. The self-report method showed only convergent validity for the latter dimension and discriminant validity for none of them. Besides intrafamilial conflict, the self-report method seemed to measure other constructs. A factor analysis of the family questionnaire indeed yielded three more evaluative constructs: conflict, cohesion, and disorganization. We interpreted these findings according to two usually interwoven mechanisms: the different research context (insider/outsider evaluation) in self-report and behavioral observation, and the different level of specification (micro/global evaluation) of certain operationalizations. We draw some conclusions about the psychosomatic family model and discuss the clinical implications of our findings.

The authors present a method for studying Minuchin's family interaction concepts ‘enmeshment’, ‘rigidity’, ‘overprotectiveness’ and ‘lack of conflict resolution’. The research procedure proposed consists of a series of standarized interaction tasks which are analyzed according to a behavioral coding system. The investigation method has been tried out in a pilot study often families with an anorexialbulimia nervosa patient. The preliminary results appear to support the hypothesis that Minuchin's rather static family typology should be replaced by a more dimensional and dynamic approach of family functioning.