ATTACKS ON BODY IN THE VIRTUAL ERA. AN ANALYSIS OF THE PHENOMENA OF BLOGS PRO-ANOREXIA AND PRO-SELF-INJURY

Introduction: Although Anorexia and Nonsuicidal Self-injury are different clinical diseases, there is a strong correlation among them, moreover both are bodily selfharming behaviours, found particularly among adolescents, above all girls. Nowadays for both these psychopathologies an increasing phenomenon appears: the birth of a widespread number of sites, blogs, as virtual communities. Objectives: This research wants to analyze Pro-Anorexia and Pro-Self-injury Italian Blogs in order to describe data, to reflect on the phenomenon starting from a psychodynamic framework on the possible function that such virtual groups begin to assume in some adolescent psychopathologies. Methods: We selected 20 websites, 10 Blogs Pro-Ana and 10 Blogs Pro-Self-injury, still operative in 2014.The texts from the Blogs were joined in two unique and different corpus Pro-Ana Blogs and Pro-SI Blogs. The texts were analyzed with T-Lab (Lancia, 2004), a quali-quantitative software for texts analysis, in order to find the emerging themes. Results: The cluster analysis carried out four thematic clusters for Pro-Ana, labelled Thin & Perfect, The Belief, Mirror mirror, I write therefore I am, and four thematic clusters for Pro-SI, labelled Cuts & Blades, Dear Diary, The Fake Self, True emotions. Pro-Ana Blogs promote a strong Belief (on Goodness Anorexia), a life style providing thin inspiration, tips and tricks suggesting extreme diets, ignoring disease, whereas Pro-SI Blogs bring into the foreground the disease and offer support. Both Blogs express a denial of the body and a fragile Self in different configurations. Discussion: We consider both Blogs as primitive forms of narration of the Self where the symptoms allow a mirroring which fills the narcissistic lack of identity. We reflect also on the necessity for clinical psychologists to widen their knowledge on this phenomenon, to understand better the new forms of request of help from their patients and to project preventive interventions.