Eating disorders as psychosomatic illness the implications for treatment
- 1 October 1994
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Taylor & Francis in Psychodynamic Counselling
- Vol. 1 (1) , 106-118
- https://doi.org/10.1080/13533339408404716
Abstract
This paper describes a body of theory which points to the possibility that eating disorders can be seen as psychosomatic illness, which is to say a symbolization of affect via the body rather than with words. The author concludes from this that eating disorders may respond better to non-verbal experiential therapies than they do to verbal therapy. She then describes four years of work with groups of eating-disordered women using non-verbal experiential therapies and suggests that the improvement in their symptoms may be the result of these methodologies and that her hypothesis merits further testing and exploration.Keywords
This publication has 1 reference indexed in Scilit:
- Bulimia in Brief Dynamic PsychotherapyBritish Journal of Psychotherapy, 1990