parison subjects (Halmi, et al, 2000). This is the largest study to date that observes anorexia nervosa with perfectionism, proving that perfectionism is an important feature in the personalities of those with anorexia.The second stage that Levenkron describes is the Security-Compulsive Stage, the thinner they get, then the fatter they feel. Anorexics desire control over their lives, including their physical and emotional surroundings. People who fall in to the trap of anorexia often feel they have a lack of control over their lives and the only thing they can control is what they eat. They have control over their body and eat exactly what they want and as little as they want. It is common for an anorexic to feel a high from periods of starvation. He states that their compulsion to lose weight becomes their singular focus. Levenkron (2000) explains that it is as if all other problems, including their relationships, have faded and her only problem is to lose weight. Stage two then is really an increasingly desperate attempt to avoid insecurity, which is doomed to failure; it will leave the victim obsessive, compulsive, distanced, ashamed and depressed at her state of mind (Levenkron, 2000). Stage three is the assertive stage, when deep emotional conflicts can add to the disease. When a child (or any person) is told that they are fat, ugly or dumb often enough they begin to believe it. As a woman grows into an adolescent, comments such as fat, ugly, dumb tend to take greater effect and when she looks in the mirror she begins to see only what others tell her to see, at fat, ugly, dumb girl. This image will prevail even when anorexia has brought a persons weight down to the point were the person is at risk of death. However, Steven Levenkron (2000) states that when their loved ones begin realizing the tenacity of the illness and nothing that they say to help them is working, they now know that the disease has given her a new sense o...
