Main description:

Who develops which eating disorder and why? When do eating disorders begin and what fuels them? In Hunger for Connection, psychoanalyst and eating-disorder specialist Alitta Kullman expands on the "body/mind" personality organization she calls the "perseverant personality," illustrating how food and thought are linked from infancy, and for some, can become the primary source of nurturance and thought-processing for a lifetime-leading to what we call an eating disorder.

Writing in a highly accessible style, Kullman brings humor and gentleness to her interactions with patients, offering health professionals and mainstream readers alike an essential guide to understanding and/or working with cyclical eating disorders of all types. From psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and counsellors, to eating disorder specialists, researchers, and students, Hunger for Connection not only provides guidelines for therapists of varying theoretical orientations and levels of expertise, but help and hope to people suffering with eating disorders and those who care for and about them.

Contents:

Prologue; Introduction Part I: Making the Connection 1 reaching for connection 2 hunger in the nursery 3 thoughts in search of a thinker 4 missing links Part II: 'Thinking' with the Body: The "Perseverant" Personality 5 mind on a merry-go-round 6 thinking alone 7 food for thought 8 the "toxic container" 9 the "closed-circuit loop" 10 no words to say it 11 the shadow of shame 12 foreign relations Part III: Thinking with the Mind 13 thinking together 14 thinking about thinking 15 thinking about feeling 16 thinking about eating 17 thinking interrupted 18 thinking and linking; Epilogue; Glossary