Etiology and personality traits in severe and morbid obesity

This article is a review from which it seeks to formulate hypotheses that, although not empirically tested, are supported by the convergence of formulations from different sources. No study on obesity can ignore that in the USA the rates of severe and morbid obesity are comparatively much higher than in other countries. I related it to Italy whose food is equivalent to the American in calories and has a similar fast-food system. Divorce, which has a much higher rate in the USA, increases the frequency of obesity among the offspring. The American individualist culture would be at the origin of the greater number of divorces, and also of the loss of community roots. The breakdown in the feelings of family union could be the unconscious cause of an intensification of the wish to eat, since food has an implicit meaning of union, derived from breastfeeding. Further, the individual culture increases the investment in verbal communication, at the expense of non-verbal forms. Several studies highlight the factor of extroversion in obesity, which comes hand in hand with verbal investment. Other studies show a dominance factor measured by the tendency to simultaneous speech and interruptions. Severe/morbid obesity provides an abnormal reproduction, characterized by an excess of self-affirmation, of the evolutionary process that ranges from loss of intimacy in practicing grooming, in monkeys, to the appearance of verbal language, due to the increase in the number of group members. Exemplifying with Orson Welles and Sir Winston Churchill.