The role of the father, both flesh-and-blood and symbolic, is explored in a subset of families of patients with anorexia nervosa. In these families the mother’s narcissistic investment in her child makes separation-individuation difficult. A factor potentially influencing whether the child goes on to develop anorexia nervosa is the strength of the paternal function, which optimally helps the child learn how to appropriately deploy his aggression in the service of separation-individuation and as a means of developing “the experience of agency”: the phenomenological experience of oneself as having an intentional impact. The role of the paternal function in developing the experience of agency is illuminated by the metaphor of rough-and-tumble play, which encapsulates the kind of experience with early objects that facilitates or forecloses the child’s capacity for experiencing agency. In the families of these patients, the father is frequently described as passive or absent and the paternal function as compromised, which arguably leads the anorexic-to-be to relegate his experience of agency to his body, which he subjugates through omnipotent control.

在一部分神经性厌食症患者的家庭中，探索了父亲的角色，无论是血肉还是象征。在这些家庭中，母亲对孩子的自恋投资使得分离-个体化变得困难。一个可能影响孩子是否会继续发展为神经性厌食症的因素是父亲功能的强度，它最有效地帮助孩子学习如何在分离-个体化服务中适当地部署他的攻击性，并作为发展“经验”的一种手段。能动性”：自身具有有意影响的现象学经验。粗暴玩耍的比喻阐明了父亲功能在发展代理经验中的作用，它概括了对早期物体的体验，这些体验促进或排除了儿童体验能动性的能力。在这些患者的家庭中，父亲经常被描述为被动或缺席，父亲的功能受到损害，这可以说导致厌食症患者将他的代理经验降级到他的身体，他通过无所不能的控制来征服身体。