A feminist psychotherapeutic approach to working with women who eat compulsively1

Abstract

Feminist psychoanalytic theorists argue that eating problems demonstrate ways in which conscious and unconscious gendered feelings about women are split off and projected on to their bodies. As such, they are complex ways in which women attempt to negotiate and express their identities within their paradoxical social position in contemporary western society. They are not just consumers but also objects of consumption. This paper explores material from a feminist psychodynamic therapy group for women with a variety of eating problems, focusing on how interweaving both discursive and unconscious approaches to understanding the gendered function of weight can facilitate change. Feminist psychodynamic therapists work with the concept that the body is an interface between conscious and unconscious mind within both an internal and a social world. This framework enables the client to understand the connections between socially constructed frameworks of femininity, emotions and bodily sensations, rather than to act on them through some form of bodily abuse. This approach is based on my adaptation of Susie Orbach's (1978) ‘Fat is a Feminist Issue’ therapeutic model for working with compulsive eaters. While arguing that a feminist psychoanalytic framework is crucial in this type of work, I suggest that it is essential to combine this with cognitive and behavioural therapeutic interventions in order to provide a pedagogic structure in which food, eating and body size come to be seen as meaningful.

Keywords:

• Compulsive eating
• feminist psychodynamic therapy
• gender
• women
• object relations theory

Notes

This paper draws on material from the following: Heenan, M. C. (2005). ‘Looking in the Fridge for Feelings’: The Gendered Psychodynamics of Consumer Culture, In J. Davidson, L. Bondi & M. Smith (Eds.), Emotional Geographies. Burlington, VT & Aldershot: Ashgate and Heenan, C. (1996). ‘Women, Food & Fat—Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen?’, In E. Burman, G. Aitken, P. Alldred, R. Allwood, T. Billington, B. Goldberg, A.J. Gordo Lopez, C. Heenan, D. Marks & S. Warner (co-authors), Challenging Women: Psychology's Exclusions, Feminist Possibilities. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.