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To the Editor: Dr Halmi's¹ discussion of a 24-year-old woman with anorexia nervosa illustrates the risk that psychiatry, as it cleaves to a certain kind of "remedicalization," may lose the patient as a person. This loss would reflect what has been decried as the shift from a "brainless" to a "mindless" psychiatry.² The loss of the voice of the patient would be ironic as medicine rediscovers the place in clinical care of the patient's experience and the patient-physician relationship.³

Fortunately, in the conference during which Halmi offered her consultation, the patient is allowed to speak along with the physicians. In her eloquent part of the printed record, she gives evidence of understanding her disease:

• curiosity about her eating disorder—where does it come from?—and its relationship to her mood disorder;
  
• doubt that her own thoughts, feelings, and wishes are valid, with consequent difficulty in negotiating expectations with others (especially parents) and . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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