A Body Neither for Myself nor for the Other

Hellena , a Contemporary Reading of the Case of Ellen West

Resumo

This theoretical essay offers a phenomenological reading of Ellen West’s case in dialogue with a contemporary clinical narrative, Hellena, a young woman diagnosed with anorexia nervosa. Taken together, these narratives illuminate the suffering associated with the disorder as it unfolds through embodiment, identity, and intersubjectivity, revealing anorexia nervosa as the expression of a profound existential conflict in being-with-others. Food refusal, social withdrawal, and the fragmentation of one’s relationship with one’s own body emerge as attempts to protect the self from the perceived intrusiveness of the other’s gaze and desire. Love, as a possibility of being and existing in the world, appears marked by fear, idealization, and bodily withdrawal. From this perspective, anorexia nervosa may be understood as a form of identity reorganization in response to the fragility of the self and the collapse of intercorporeality. Love and the lived body thus become central dimensions for understanding the mode of suffering and existence of those who, paradoxically, seek to preserve themselves from the other and from themselves.