Therioes

6 Pages 1611 Words

This article starts off with an introduction to the experiments that were used to determine gender identity, object relational functioning and body image. Bassett gives examples of different studies used in showing male’s anorexia nervosa. Stating that a few studies have been reported on this matter and he wanted to do a study and see of it was in correlation to the statistics.
He first found males with previous anorexic history through clinical resources. Then the hypothesis followed which are:
1. Anorexic males are conflicted about their masculinity and disavow it, more at the
Conscious level then unconscious level.
2. Anorexic males are impaired in the developmental level of self and object
Representation.
3. Anorexic males experience continuing distortions on body image, even after they
Recover from underweight status. That is, they perceive their body shape
Incorrectly.
He used eight males in his study performing four experiments. The first experiment was the Franck Drawling Completion Test, which shows unconscious gender identification by using seven line figures. The second was the Bam Sex-Role Inventory which is based on conscious gender identification using a short form. The third is The Assessment of Qualitive and Structural Dimensions of Object Representation which is based on the conceptual level of themselves and their object representation using questions and them writing the answers. The last experiment was the Perceived Somatotype Scale which was based on body image accuracy by identifying a drawing on a figure scale.

In each test, the results varied but none of the findings were in correlation to the statistics. He had used a smaller number of males and therefore, could not compare his findings to the statistics. If a larger study had been done, the findings most likely would have fit the statistics. ...