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The current thesis aims to examine the relationship among attributional styles, eating disorder symptoms and depressive symptoms.

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A variety of risk factors for bulimia nervosa have been proposed including both environmental factors (e.g., family environment) and personal characteristics (e.g., body dissatisfaction, self-esteem, and perfectionism). The main goal of this study was to further examine the relationship between body satisfaction, self-esteem, and perfectionism in the development of bulimic symptoms. A confirmatory factor analysis on the construct of perfectionism was conducted to determine if it was best explained as a unidimensional or a multidimensional construct. Perfectionism was best explained as a construct consisting of three factors--normal perfectionism, neurotic perfectionism, and orderliness. The relationship between body satisfaction, self-esteem, and perfectionism in the development of bulimic behaviors was also examined using structural equation modeling. We did not find support for a hypothesized three-way interaction among body satisfaction, self-esteem, and neurotic perfectionism in the development of bulimic behavior. We did find support for a pair of two-way interactions predicting bulimic behaviors. Interactions between body satisfaction and self-esteem and body satisfaction and neurotic perfectionism were predicitve of bulimic symptom development.

A variety of risk factors for bulimia nervosa have been proposed including both environmental factors (e.g., family environment) and personal characteristics (e.g., body dissatisfaction, self-esteem, and perfectionism). The main goal of this study was to further examine the relationship between body satisfaction, self-esteem, and perfectionism in the development of bulimic symptoms. A confirmatory factor analysis on the construct of perfectionism was conducted to determine if it was best explained as a unidimensional or a multidimensional construct. Perfectionism was best explained as a construct consisting of three factors--normal perfectionism, neurotic perfectionism, and orderliness. The relationship between body satisfaction, self-esteem, and perfectionism in the development of bulimic behaviors was also examined using structural equation modeling. We did not find support for a hypothesized three-way interaction among body satisfaction, self-esteem, and neurotic perfectionism in the development of bulimic behavior. We did find support for a pair of two-way interactions predicting bulimic behaviors. Interactions between body satisfaction and self-esteem and body satisfaction and neurotic perfectionism were predicitve of bulimic symptom development.

Objectification theory (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997) has been used to explain how mechanisms related to socialization, sexual objectification, and psychological variables interact to predict mental health difficulties. Among a sample of 626 undergraduate women (age 18-24), this study empirically tested components of Moradi and Huang’s (2008) model and extended it by including additional socialization experiences (i.e., sexual abuse, societal pressures regarding weight and body size). Structural equation modeling analyses suggested that the model provided a good fit to the data and the model was tested in the confirmatory sample. Across the two samples, high levels of Body Shame and low levels of Internal Bodily Awareness directly led and high levels of Societal Pressures Regarding Weight and Body Size, Internalization of Cultural Standards of Beauty, and Self-objectification indirectly led to increased Bulimic Symptomatology and accounted for 65 to 73% of the variance in Bulimic Symptomatology. A history of sexual abuse and sexual objectification were not consistently supported within the model and do not appear to be as salient as the experience of societal pressures regarding weight and body size in understanding women’s experience of bulimic symptomatology. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.

The purpose of this study was to examine sociocultural and psychological correlates of bulimic symptomatology and drive for thinness in a sample of nonclinical female adolescents.

This explorative qualitative research investigates whether there is a difference in the symbolic meanings between the bulimic’s behaviour of purposefully expelling food versus the anorexic’s deprivation of food by administering the Thematic Apperceptive Test, as well as, conducting in-depth, semi-structured individual interviews with two bulimic women, two anorexic women of the restrictive sub-type and one anorexic woman of the binge-eating/ purging sub-type, whose ages ranged from twenty-one to thirty-five years of age. Both the conscious and unconscious themes that emerge from their stated relationship with food and their TAT responses are explored, with particular interest being focused on whether the symbolic meaning of food is in essence a “symbolic equation” for an object, specifically the mother and parental couple. The concept of “symbolic equation” is explored analytically from a Kleinian perspective to ascertain whether it is not food, per se that the anorexic is depriving herself of or that the bulimic suddenly and uncontrollably ingests, but then rapidly and violently expels. On the contrary, it appears that the refusal to introject or the ambivalent battle between introjection and expulsion of food is used as a disguise for the underlying conflictual object relation/s. The modified version of the Bellak Scoring System (1986) was used to analyse their TAT responses in order to elicit the themes that represent their internal worlds and object relations. Individual thematic content analysis was conducted on each interview transcript separately, and then a comparative analysis performed to explore commonalities and differences across the transcripts and TAT responses amongst the three anorexic women as a group and the bulimic women as a separate group. After which, the two different eating disorder groups were compared to explore both their differences and similarities. The findings suggest that a variety of conscious and unconscious motives might best be understood within the historical context of each participant’s early development and family dynamics. It appears that the anorexic is unconsciously motivated, at least partly, by her desire to repudiate any experience of dependency, separateness, loss, frustration, envy, fear, guilt and helplessness. Conversely, the bulimic appears to be motivated, at least partly, by the repetitive magical quest to restore a ‘good’ self-object bond and to stifle her destructiveness. Nonetheless, underlying both the anorexic’s and the bulimic’s illness is an ambivalent struggle with internalising a gainful and durable link to an object, which can in some way be permitted to be ‘good’. This appears to have its origin in the mother-daughter relationship, father-daughter relationship, parental couple, as well as, the triangular space between the mother-daughter-father link. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Psychology / unrestricted