Imperviousness in Anorexia – the No-Entry Defence

The Body Responds

“…Similar to the feelings of redundancy described above, both Williams (1997) and Willner (2002) describe the anorexic client's 'no entry defences'. This resonated with my own sense of being helpless to do anything, of being 'kept out', and my feelings of powerlessness.…”

Applying Psychoanalytic Thinking in a Staff Support Group to Reflect on Service Change and Clinical Practice in a Specialist Psychiatric Service

“…The experience of working with patients in the grip of anorexia has been described as annihilating because their imperviousness ensures that the clinician makes no impact or impression (Willner 2002). They are also known to arouse strong feelings 9 of anger and despair because of the powerful masochism that characterizes their object relations much like the patients Joseph (1988) describes as 'addicted to near-death'.…”

“…In order to protect themselves from the considerable anxiety of intrusion anorexic patients resort to a defensive structure based largely on the need for control of internal objects, self-sufficiency arising from the omnipotent denial of need and manic defence from depressive anxiety (for clinical discussion and illustration of these defences see, for instance, Birksted-Breen 1997, Burgner 1997, Lawrence 2001, Willner 2002.…”

Interactional Effects of Multidimensional Perfectionism and Cognitive Emotion Regulation Strategies on Eating Disorder Symptoms in Female College Students

“…Similarly, given that catastrophizing involves the overestimation of threatening outcomes related to one’s shortcomings, we hypothesized that perfectionistic individuals who catastrophize about failure-related consequences (e.g., “If I exceed my ideal body weight, I will be repulsive”) would report a greater degree of eating disorder symptoms (e.g., weight restriction). This is likely because eating disorder symptoms may temporarily provide a sense of reliability and control by helping to regulate catastrophic thoughts/emotions associated with anticipated failure-related consequences [ 52 ]. Consistently, individuals with eating disorders have been shown to display higher levels of catastrophic worry when compared to healthy controls [ 22 ].…”