Devouring the self: from Erysichthon to modern autophagia – Psychiatry in literature

In Greek mythology the story of Erysichthon, King of Thessaly, provides one of the earliest depictions of an insatiable hunger and pathological self-consumption.As punishment for having desecrated a sacred grove of Demeter, the goddess afflicted him with an unrelenting appetite.When no food sufficed and all wealth was spent, Erysichthon ultimately fed on his own body.The culmination of the myth is vividly captured by the Roman poet Ovid (43 BCE to 17/18 CE), who writes: 'He began to tear apart his own limbs with savage bites, and the wretched man fed, diminishing his body' (Metamorphoses, VIII, 877-8).References to self-inflicted bodily harm also appear in medieval Christian hagiography, often as expressions of extreme penitence or mystical devotion.Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), for instance, reportedly bit her own hands during states of religious ecstasy and extreme fasting.Historical figures across centuries have exhibited forms of bodily self-consumptionnail-biting, finger-chewing, skin-pickingthat modern psychiatry would probably recognise as mild manifestations of autophagia (from the Greek (autos), 'self' + (phagein), 'to eat').Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), French philosopher, in his Essais, refers to the habit of 'ronger les ongles' as one of the bodily automatisms through which anxiety expresses itself.The Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837), afflicted by chronic illness and melancholy, was described by contemporaries as habitually biting his fingers during long periods of philosophical labour.The French writer Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), in moments of agitation and withdrawal, was said to torment his hands until they bled.