Dancing with Demons
Over the past several month I gradually became aware that certain fairytale themes that can be found in the mythology of anorexia nervosa can also be found in ballet productions. While working on The Queen of Wonderland book and observing videos of ballet for clues, I began to form a picture that illustrates a potential intimate relationship between ballet and the phenomenon of anorexia nervosa.
Conventional theory suggests that the reason why girls who pursues ballet and fashion modelling become anorectic is because of the demands by producers of these media to lose weight. But this in only an accessory factor, i.e., a trigger if you like, to a much deeper complex of factors taking place in both the culture and in the individual’s psychic background.
Because of ongoing revelations surrounding the phenomenon anorexia nervosa, I have been delaying the publication of the book. It keeps getting revised, and each revision makes it so much better that it was worth the delay. But I cannot keep letting this interfere with the publication of the book. I believe that I have reached a point where I must stop making revisions and publish the book because I intend to follow up this book with future volumes. The subject of self-harm is far too complex and variable to be dealt with in one volume on the topic. As it stands now, the text of the book has grown to about 300 pages in 6″ by 9″ book format, and that doesn’t even include the bibliography, endnotes, references and index. And as much as I try to find stuff to delete, I am unable to find any more stuff to delete after tossing out a lot of repetitious stuff last summer. Consequently, my plans are to provide the bibliography, endnotes, references and index in a separate book in 8.5″ by 11″ format and bound like a cookbook, so that it can be laid out flat when open. That will make accessing the reference material so much easier because one won’t have to go back and forth through the book when looking up stuff.
The endnotes, references and the summaries of what the references are about now takes up over 100 pages in that format, which translates to almost twice that number of pages in the 6″ by 9″ book format! Not everyone who is interest in the book will bother with the references, so I figure it is better to provide the reference material in a separate format that one can order as an option if they so choose.
I mentioned a while back, that anyone who is sincerely interested in understanding the actual cause of anorexia nervosa, that they should try to acquire at least the first season of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series. From what I gather, these episodes are sometimes broadcast as reruns, so that one could record them for later viewing. However, I really don’t have any information on that because I don’t have a TV and have never personally owned a TV set. Half of The Queen of Wonderland book is devoted to the analysis of 11 episodes from season one. One would never guess from watching these stories that they contain analogies to the psychodynamics of anorexia nervosa. From an adult’s perspective, most of these stories will appear to be nothing more than silly nonsense. But the theme of a heroine having been chosen against her will to struggle with a horde of homicidal demons and bloodsucking vampires represents a suitable metaphor for how many anorexics experience their own lives. And there is a lot more in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series that parallels self-harming behaviour in a metaphorical way.
