On Monday I finally got into see my new therapist. This was only our second session together so we’re still in the introductory phase and it’s still too early to know if we’re going to work well together. At the Eating Disorders Clinic I go to there’s a shelf of books you can borrow and I picked up a copy of Marion Woodman’s The Owl Was a Baker’s Daughter: Obesity, Anorexia Nervosa, and the Repressed Feminine which I just finished reading this afternoon.
One of the things I really like about The Owl Was a Baker’s Daughter is that it recognizes that obesity and anorexia are not opposites of each other counterparts which I really believe is true. “In both pathologies,” Woodman writes, “the girls are repressed, too compliant, too desirous to fulfill their parent’s expectations, even to fulfill their parents’ unlived lives… Both want control and seek that control through denial of food.”
When I was overweight, I often tried not to eat but would inevitably rebel at the restrictions and binge with tremendous shame and self-hatred. I stopped binging for the same reason I recently stopped drinking. Living with myself after I did it had become too hard. Now I only binge a few times a year, or every few years but everyday I’m aware that I have the capacity to binge, to over eat, to gain weight, to get fat. Everyday I still feel that shame and self-loathing.
The Owl Was a Baker’s Daughter approaches eating disorders from the standpoint of Jungian psychology and as such treats fear and compulsion as serious, soul killing maladies instead of trying to make them light and harmless as most self-help and pop-psychology does. Unfortunately this had the side effect of making me profoundly sad as I was reading this book but maybe that’s for the best. I don’t often feel a lot of compassion for myself.
I’ve always been very much attuned to Jungian theory. I’m a superstitious person who tends to see things in terms of witchcraft, ghosts, demons, Gods and superpowers. Jungian psychology, which places importance on religious imagery, mythology, dreams and symbols very much speaks my language. Not surprisingly, when Woodman writes of being “possessed” by eating disorders it resonates deeply with me.
I really did feel like the book articulated many of the conflicts underlying my problems with weight and food. In a summary of factors in family background many seemed to describe the environment I grew up in. In fact it’s almost scarily accurate—
“Mother usually unconscious of her own femininity, out of touch with her own body and sexuality.”
“Mother tended to be domineering towards whole family rejecting the girl as an individual, and projected her own unlived life onto the child.”
“Mother probably considered the father weak and incompetent in his relationship to the world”“
“All spontaneity in the home was rigidly disciplined.”
“Daughter felt the hopes and dreams of both parents were pinned on her.”
“Daughter forced into maternal role too early, therefore rejects mature maternal role, prefers to remain a child.”
A summary of the personality problems likely to develop from a background of this kind describes me fairly well—
“As an adult, still dependent on the mother or father, at the same time rebellious against them.”
“Inability to cope with reality,,, flights of fantasy.”
“Feels herself manipulated and victimized by evil forces from outside (e.g., parents, Devil, God).
“”Passivity” terrifies her… “To surrender” for her means giving up, cowardice, loss of control, annihilation. Can not understand “losing one’s life to find one’s life”, either sexually or spiritually.”
“Devoted to Apollinian order and discipline. Terrified of anything remotely smacking of the Dionysian, therefore prone to possession of it (e.g. midnight binges).
“Fantasies of perfection lead to “all or nothing” attitudes which discourage moderate dieting.”
Woodman sees the way out of eating disorders as “surrendering control, opening herself up to fate.” This involves accepting the chaos of the world, accepting and even embracing co-existing opposites. I know this is something I have a huge problem with. It you want to see the evidence go to my entry of a few days ago where I made a snide but fairly mild comment about people on food stamps shopping at whole foods.
Yet the minute someone took offense I became convinced I was a horrible person and wrote voluminous responses trying to assure myself and anyone who would listen that I was indeed a decent person that I was non-judgmental, resented no one, and harbored no incorrect thoughts. It never occurred to me that you can be a decent person and still be cranky, judgmental, irritable, insensitive and even wrong. I don’t think in those terms. I’ve never been able to accept contradictions in either myself or the world.
I could give thousands of examples of this but it would only illustrate what I already know, that I have a serious problem existing, being myself, living any kind of a life. I get angry with my family because they don’t seem to understand how hard things are for me. They tell me what I ought to do and all I want to do is cry because it seems impossible to me. How do you meet new people or sell yourself at a job interview when you hate yourself so much that it’s an effort not to cut yourself or starve yourself or eat or drink to the point of insensibility?
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