The Spirituality of Anorexia
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UNIVERSITY OF WINCHESTER The Spirituality of Anorexia: Towards Healing and Liberation of the Goddess in Every Woman Emma Elizabeth Victoria White PhD Thesis January, 2017 This Thesis has been completed as a requirement for a postgraduate research degree of the University of Winchester. The Word Count is: 94,837 0 Declaration No portion of the work referred to in the Thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or other institute of learning. I confirm that this Thesis is entirely my own work. Copyright Statement Copyright © Emma Elizabeth Victoria White, 2017, The Spirituality of Anorexia: Towards Healing and Liberation of the Goddess in Every Woman, University of Winchester, PhD Thesis, 1 – 232. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. Copies (by any process) either in full, or of extracts, may be made only in accordance with instructions given by the author. Details may be obtained from the RKE Centre, University of Winchester. This page must form part of any such copies made. Further copies (by any process) of copies made in accordance with such instructions may not be made without the permission (in writing) of the author. No profit may be made from selling, copying or licensing the author’s work without further agreement. 1 Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge the generous support, encouragement and time that I have received from Professor Lisa Isherwood. I feel incredibly lucky to have had the opportunity to work with her and benefit from her experience over the many years of study that has culminated in this thesis. She has provided me with a world of opportunities and encouragement, a creative space to develop my ideas whilst calling on me to continuously challenge pre-existing assumptions. I am extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to study with her, she is an inspirational woman and I hope to continue to work by her side. Thank you Lisa! I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Reverend Doctor Janet Wootten for her feedback, encouragement and kind words. Her comments have been invaluable for the completion of this project. Lastly, I whole-heartedly thank my family, who have put up with my absence, my frustrations and animated ramblings at different stages throughout this process. In particular I thank my partner, Scott, for all his support. For putting up with my long periods of absence as I reserved every holiday, year-after-year for my writing and research. For being there through times of frustration and elation, for topping up coffee cups, motivating me when my enthusiasm for working late nights and long weekends ebbed and reminding me that life extends beyond the pages of a thesis. 2 THE UNIVERSITY OF WINCHESTER Abstract The Spirituality of Anorexia: Towards Healing and Liberation of the Goddess in Every Woman Emma Elizabeth Victoria White PhD Thesis January, 2017 The following body of work is concerned with the female body in contemporary society, specifically the development of anorexia nervosa, and what this expression communicates about female embodiment. Drawing upon the work of a variety of theorists, social commentators, liberation theologians and thealogians I argue that anorexia develops as a consequence of living in a patriarchal society that creates a disjunction between women and their bodies. The consequence of this destructive rhetoric has kept women disempowered, disembodied and disconnected from a strong and powerful feminine heritage. My contribution to originality is the postulation that Goddess feminism can provide the framework- through its myths, symbols and rituals- for a female empowering and healing therapeutic model to address anorexia and more broadly, the slender ideal touted by society. I suggest that if enough women engaged with Goddess feminism, a shift would take place within society, as our patriarchal heritage would be balanced by female empowering rhetoric, addressing the gender inequalities that still permeate society. I discuss the adoption of female focused myths, symbols and rituals, drawing upon the work of Marion Woodman and Naomi Goldenberg, to theorise on a thealogical approach to anorexia aimed at displacing the damaging discourses that underlie female disembodiment in the twenty-first century. The Spirituality of Anorexia: Towards Healing and Liberation of the Goddess in Every Woman utilises the principles inherent to Goddess feminism to displace anorexia and the slender performance as we work towards constructing alternative models of embodiment for women within society today. 3 Contents Introduction 5 Methodology 13 Chapter One – Anorexia Nervosa 30 . History 36 . The Aetiology of Anorexia 41 . Treatment 49 Chapter Two – The Female Body as Mediated by Society 53 . The Female Body in Contemporary Society 55 . Media 57 . Neurosexism 62 . Female Stereotypes 67 . Dieting and Consumer Capitalism 71 . Susan Bordo and the “Axes of Continuity” 74 Chapter Three – The Female Body as a Politically Mediated Form 81 . Foucault and the Body Politic 82 . Gender Performativity 85 . The Slender Performance 89 . Ritual of Transformation 93 Chapter Four – The Female Body as a Historically Mediated Form 106 . Anorexia as a Culture-Bound Syndrome 107 . Hysteria, Agoraphobia and Anorexia 110 . The Politics of Self-Starvation 114 . Is There Any Spirituality to be gleaned from the Anorexic Experience? 121 . Anorexia as a Healing Rite of Passage 125 Chapter Five – The Female Body as a Religiously Mediated Form 133 . The Judeo-Christian’s Dualistic Heritage 134 . Judeo-Christian History of Sexism 141 . Feminist Theologies Critique on the History of Sexism 146 . Fasting Saints and Holy Anorexics 152 . Contemporary Christian Diet Rhetoric 160 Chapter Six – The Female Body as a Thealogically Mediated Form 168 . Thealogy and Discourses on the Goddess 170 . Language and the Construction of Reality 184 . The Goddess as a Symbol of Psychological Strength 192 . Ritual 200 Conclusion 209 Bibliography 219 4 Introduction She wakes in the morning fatigued and frightened. Her first thoughts are about food. Will it invade her today, or will she manage to resist?... she finds solace in not eating, in overcoming desire, in creating a self who goes without. Susie Orbach1 One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well. Virginia Woolf2 The aim of my thesis is to develop a Spirituality of Anorexia as I draw upon evidence that eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa, are physical symptoms of the general repression of feminine nature in our culture. The research and theories of a number of social commentators and female psychotherapists, feminist liberation theologians, thealogical commentators and thealogians will be discussed as I aim to rediscover the lost Goddess not only in society but within every woman. My work is explicitly concerned with the psychology of women and what anorexia and the slender ideal communicate about their place within contemporary society. As you shall see in the following pages, anorexia is still a predominantly female disorder and as such, the experiences and voices of women are my primary concern. A central focus of this piece of work is the theorising of a thealogical response to societies construction of the feminine, how this directly affects female embodiment and leads to the subsequent manifestation of anorexia. This thesis marks the start of a broader research project concerned with developing alternative therapeutic responses to anorexia which utilises the symbolism of the Goddess within a thealogical framework providing women with access to empowering and embodying symbols of the feminine. As you will see in the following pages, anorexia here is understood as symbolic of a female yearning for meaning, significance and value (expressed through utilising cultural preoccupations with the slender female body) in a patriarchal society that continues to value male over female virtues. I argue that the mainstream societal adoption of a thealogical framework will help to displace and subvert damaging female idealisations and stereotypes that contribute to the individual’s utilisation of the anorexic expression whilst offering empowering symbols of female embodiment and a connection to a broader empowering framework. Whilst this piece of work is focused on how thealogy may theoretically benefit the contemporary experience of female embodiment, post-doctoral work will focus on how thealogy may be incorporated within current mainstream therapeutic responses to broaden approaches to healing whilst displacing the social norms that lead to the utilisation of this expression. Despite my 1 Orbach S (1993) Hunger Strike: The Anorectic’s Struggle as a Metaphor for Our Age. London: Penguin, xviii. 2 Woolf V (1929, 1981) A Room of One’s Own. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 18. 5 focus on theory, current therapeutic responses will be touched upon throughout when necessary to provide a thorough overview of the theories I am discussing. Themes of control, low self-esteem, disempowerment, rejection, suffering and the desire for a youthful aesthetic are recurring themes throughout literature on eating disorders. A plethora of writing spanning decades speculate on the aetiology of anorexia and focuses, with increasing rapture, on the observation that appearance norms have become increasingly invasive and oppressive for women.3 In less than two decades the acceptable female body size has dropped by one third4 and most women not only do not fit it, but attempting to do so is threatening their lives and significantly damaging their place in this world. Increasing amounts of time, money and attention have to be spent on reducing the body and maintaining their weight loss. This had led many social commentators5 to conclude that these beauty norms are a form of female oppression aimed at keeping women supressed, sedated, numb and politically castrated. What is really worrying is that this slender ideal has become mainstream and is considered the “norm” for girls and young women.