Beyond Anorexia
Narrative, Spirituality and Recovery

A sociological exploration of eating disorders and the first book to focus exclusively on recovery.

Catherine Garrett (Author)

9780521629836, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 13 October 1998

260 pages
22.9 x 15.3 x 1.9 cm, 0.425 kg

"In this unconventional look at eating disorders, Garrett addresses the existential and spiritual questions surrounding anorexia nervosa." Choice

Beyond Anorexia is a sociological exploration of how people recover from what medicine labels 'eating disorders', and the first book to focus exclusively on recovery. Beginning with her own autobiography, and drawing on conversations with over thirty other former sufferers, Catherine Garrett demonstrates that narrative is fundamental to social theory and to healing. Her central claim is that recovery is a 'spiritual' experience reconnecting the self with body, nature and society. She analyses spirituality and its relationship with formal religion along with its association with the ascetic rituals of eating disorders. Recovery is shown to be key to full understanding of anorexia, and the processes associated with recovery are explored in terms of embodied spirituality. Using the anthropological theories of Durkheim and van Gennep and contemporary theories of the body, Catherine Garrett reveals some of the social sources of recovery - the solution - which exist alongside the causes of the problem.

Part I. Personal Sociology: 1. Descent and return
2. Researching recovery
3. Autobiography, narrative and healing
Part II. Anorexia and Recovery: 4. Reinterpreting 'anorexia'
5. Reinterpreting 'recovery'
6. Recovery stories
Part III. Spirituality: 7. Society and spirit
8. Rituals of self-transformation
9. Spiritual stories
Part IV. The Body: 10. Recreating the body
11. The sexual body
12. The knowing body
Epilogue
Appendices.

Subject Areas: Illness & addiction: social aspects [JFFH]