[Parent personality, family status and family dynamics in anorexia nervosa patients with special reference to father-daughter relations (a retrospective study)].

The present study was part of a large-scale retrospective comparative study on 103 pubertal patients with anorexia nervosa who were treated as outpatients and/or inpatients at the Pediatric and Youth Psychiatry Division of the University of Tübingen between 1979 and 1984. In the present substudy, a more detailed analysis was made of the data on the marriage and family situation, the personality structure of the parents, and the mother-daughter and father-daughter relationships. The findings do not support the hypothesis that individuals with anorexia nervosa have dominant mothers and weak fathers. A symbiotically close mother-daughter relationship with elements of aggression was found in about 75% of the subjects studied. In the fathers, the autoritarian-dominant type predominated. Slightly less that 17% of the fathers could be characterized as being weak and passive. Protestant patients were overrepresented in the population studied, and brothers were underrepresented. Both the high percentage of daughters who rejected their fathers in an aggressive way (33.3%) and the high percentage with a pronounced oedipal problem with their fathers (44.5%) led us to conclude that the father-daughter relationship has a significance which should not be overlooked in the context of anorexia development and symptom-maintaining dynamic features. In the light of these findings, the stereotype of a pathognomonic family constellation with a dominant mother or grandmother that is widespread in the literature is not tenable.