Feminist Perspectives on Eating Disorders [Paperback]

This important work illuminates the relationship between the anguish of eating disorder sufferers and the problems of ordinary women. It covers a wide variety of issues from ways in which gender may predispose women to eating disorders to the widespread cultural concerns these problems symbolize. Chapters all share three basic elements: The psychology of women is reflected in the concepts and methods described; there is an explicit commitment to political and social equality for women; and therapy is reevaluated based on an understanding of the needs of women patients and the potentially differing contributions of male and female therapists.

Approximately 90 percent of individuals who struggle with eating disorders are women. Clearly, a volume that is dedicated to a feminist understanding of these disorders is long overdue. Drs. Fallon, Katzman, and Wooley, veteran clinicians in the area have collected a distinguished group of authors who present this perspective. The chapters are all thoughtful, rigorous, and highly readable. This is a text that should be read by all clinicians interested in this area, regardless of their theoretical orientation. --Craig Johnson, Ph.D., Co-Director, Laureate Psychiatric Clinic and Hospital, Eating Disorders Program, Professor of Clinical Psychology, University of Tulsa

These essays on women's troubled relationship to her body and food are of a high standard. They take as their starting point women's experience in the social, psychological, and political worlds. They express the pain, the rage, and the courage that is women's lives while their scholarship shows our strivings to create better understandings of our lives. --Susie Orbach, psychotherapist and writer, author ofFat is a Feminist IssueandHunger Strike: The Anorectic's Struggle as a Metaphor of Our Age.

In the grey stream of publications on eating disorders, this colorful book cannot be overlooked by those working with anol“.