Sigmund Freud founded the idea of psychoanalysis in the 1900s.  He believed that past experiences, especially during childhood, had a major effect on a person’s development of later personality traits and psychological problems.  Freud believed that in order to help solve the person’s problems, psychologists needed to find a way to make conscious one’s unconscious thoughts and motivations and thus gaining insight as to why they are they way they are.

As I learned about the concept of psychoanalysis in lecture I began to think about how it applied to my life and the lives of people around me.  The first person that came to my mind was one of my good friends from home.  In order to protect her privacy I will call her Jen.  Senior year of high school I started noticing Jen changing her behavior towards food and I did not understand why.  First, out of nowhere, she decided to become a vegan.  This meant that she would not eat meat, eggs, dairy products, and all other animal-derived ingredients.  I thought that this was odd because she never really seemed too concerned with animals or her health before, but I just let it go thinking it was a phase like many other high school girls had.  Later on in the school year, I started noticing that at lunchtime, Jen did not eat anymore.  This started to worry me a little so I would always offer my food to her or offer to go buy her some lunch.  She would always give an excuse like she wasn’t hungry or was going to eat when she got home because the cafeteria food was gross.  As the months went by, I noticed Jen getting very skinny.  I was worried that she was not on a proper diet and that it was unhealthy.  One night I went out to dinner with Jen and our friends and I noticed Jen eating way more food than usual and also that she had dropped the vegan diet.  This confused me a lot considering that she was still very skinny and she continued to eat like this for the next couple of weeks from what I saw.  My suspicions grew until Jen finally confirmed them.  One day she told us that she was not going to be able to go to college with everyone next year.  She was being forced to go through some intense treatment for bulimia.  Bulimia is an eating disorder common in young women that feel overweight or uncomfortable in their body.  Bulimia is generally characterized by binge eating and then induced vomiting in order to lose weight.  I believe that Jen got bulimia because her mother would always tell her how she needed to lose weight.  This past experience caused Jen to feel that she was not pretty enough and that the only way to do something about it was either to stop eating or by vomiting afterwards.  Today she has gone through her treatment and she is feeling happier and healthier as of 200 days.  All of her friends and family are very proud of her.  Jen feels good about herself now because she was able to find a healthy way to keep her body weight under control through eating healthy and proper exercise.