Abstract: ® correctly goes beyond this theory in situating anorexia historically and socially.But this raises further problems.For, by starting with the broad question of sex inequality, Orbach at once explains both too much and too little: too much, in suggesting that our sexually unequal society makes all women anorexic; too little, in failing adequately to describe the specific biographical factors that drove the individuals she describes to become anorexic.An alternative approach is to begin with the specifics of women's individual experience.This was the method adopted by Freud in having women free associate to their symptoms -a method that led him, albeit unwillingly and even then only rudimentarily, to recognize the way women's symptoms are determined