For an anorexic dieting has become an obsession and the obsession has become a disease. Anorexia Nervosa is a puzzling and cruel disease affecting thousands and thousands of young and healthy women and adolescents (Bruch 3). Anorexia Nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by the pursuit of thinness (Garner & Garfinkel 339). Anorexics willingly undergo the ordeal of starvation even to the point of death (Bruch 4). Anorexics are people who are obsessed with food and who constantly fight the urge to eat (Marx 22). Anorexia Nervosa strikes mostly adolescent girls. Most estimates place the disease incidence at 1 out of every 250 adolescent girls (Levenkron 1-2).
             It is important to get the anorexic help immediately. If they do not get help, they can die. There are different ways to help an anorexic. There is therapy for example, family therapy, individual therapy, psychotherapy therapy and what seems to be the most effective; group therapy. If the anorexic is in serious need and therapy is not working, they will be hospitalized. Medicines are often at help to an anorexic.
             Therapy alone can cure an anorexic patient. Anorexics feel that therapy in general can intervene or cause a deadly threat against robbing them of their "specialness" (Marx 51). There are three main stages of therapy. The first stage is the main issue of the anorexic reluctance to be a patient. The illness is addressed during initial consolation. The therapist attempts to establish a verbal contract with patient and to help the patient with problems. The middle stage is where revelant issues are brought up and worked on. The anorexic is engaged in a struggle to gain some self-respect and self-esteem. Their inner world is chaotic and full of anxiety and horror. Negative therapeutic reaction occurs which is impasse or regression that occurs when least expected. They fall apart psychologically. The final stage the patient begins to exper...