Negative Delusions and the Symbolic Body: A Hypothesis on the Co-Occurrence of Psychosis and Anorexia in Adolescence.
Early Intervention in Psychiatry July 1, 2026 Yiğit Özaydın, Buket Canlan Özaydın
Anorexia nervosa that emerges alongside adolescent psychosis may function as a 'negative delusion'—not a distortion of the symbolic body but its erasure. Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, the paper argues that this erasure stems from a shared structural failure in symbolic integration. Self-starvation can serve as a defense against psychotic threats by negating the body's symbolic dimension within social meaning. The framework has implications for early diagnosis and intervention, identifying a structural configuration in a subset of presentations at the intersection of psychosis and eating restriction, rather than proposing a new diagnostic subtype.