It sounds as though I am going to write a piece pondering the basic existential questions of life and death. However, I've had only one glass of wine and my Kierkergaardian streak needs more than that to get going. No, the `big' question which I have in mind concerns to what extent the ®eld of eating disorders in general and this journal in particular should become involved with the issue of obesity.
For some years now eating disorder buffs and obesity people have been conducting a kind of prolonged ¯irtation. There is no doubt that the two ®elds have grown closer together. So far, it has been a rather old fashioned affair characterized more by warm words than by any real action. The two parties have been seen together at the same conferences and they have even got under the covers of the same books. But when they meet, although there is always a lot of talk about BED, it seems they remain just good friends.
Why is this? Some say they are made for one another. They would seem to have a lot in common and a great deal to offer each other. But they both seem afraid to get closer. What could they be afraid of?
My guess is that the eating disorder people fear being swamped. They are used to struggling to deal with the demand for services even for their relatively uncommon disorders. What, they wonder, would happen if they opened their doors to the overweight? Primitive phantasies of being crushed and overwhelmed by large bodies scare them. And the obesity people? I think that they fear that unless they restrict their interest to the truly obese, they will be drawn into the dodgy business of slimming for cosmetic reasons. Their phantasy is of being pestered by the apparently trivial demands of the incurably vainÐand of everyone who wants to lose just a bit of weight before their next holiday. The obesity people are serious clinicians concerned with serious problems and are wary of these trivia. And anyway they too weigh just a bit more than they would wish. So who are they to move into that territory? Are these fears justi®ed? Probably not. So I think that the European Review should welcome contributions that link the ®elds of eating disorders and obesity. Even some papers on obesity itself would be welcome, but not, of course, too many. We don't want to get swamped.