Creating Bodies

Eating Disorders as Self-destructive Survival

Author: Katie Gentile
ISBN: 9780881634389

Amid the welter of clinical studies, memoirs, and other death-defying tales of eating disorders, we remain unclear about the relationships among trauma, anorexia, and bulimia, and about the psychological pathways to recovery. Creating Bodies offers the gripping story of healing and transformation detailed in one woman's diaries. Hannah wrote 18 diaries between the ages of 14 and 32. In the excerpts reprinted herein, we watch Hannah navigate violent adolescent friendships, descend into anorexia and bulimia, marry an abusive man, struggle to recover memories of sexual abuse, and finally to heal. And we learn of her interaction with Katie Gentile, who analyzed her diaries and met with Hannah to discuss the latter's own understanding of the diaries and of the diary analysis.Through a close study of both the content and structure of Hannah's diaries, Gentile shows how unspeakable, embodied remnants of sexual trauma become symbolized and how, within this process, Hannah's bulimia functione

Publisher: Analytic Press
Publish Date: 2007

Subjects: Psychology / Applied Psychology, Psychology / Psychopathology / Eating Disorders

This book is available in the following Community Centers: Women's Center (Location: Body Image)