A case of trichotillomania and trichophagy: Fantasies of cannibalism.

Cannibalistic fantasies underlie some core mechanisms in psychoanalysis: identification, incorporation, introjection, and internalization. Freud (1917) saw melancholia as an incorporation of the object by devouring it, and Julia Kristeva (1989) takes the melancholic cannibalistic imagination to be a repudiation of loss, a destruction in order to possess the object. The author argues that cannibalism is a useful concept for understanding the double dynamics of trichotillomania and trichophagy - as destructive disconnection followed by incorporation of the hair; both suggest a magical reconnection with what was disconnected in order to establish a bond with the mother/analyst. The paradoxical passion of consuming the object of desire, symbolized here by the hair (resembling an umbilical cord and connection to the maternal object) captures the cannibalistic fantasy of never losing the object by destroying it.