ABSTRACT
Obesity is a poorly understood growing epidemic. Public perceptions continue to locate the problem with the individual, who is stigmatized, marginalized, and shamed. This article argues that assumptions, namely that psychological issues are causal, are unhelpful therapeutic responses that risk further shame and self-loathing. It proposes a psychotherapeutic approach to obesity with an open, curious therapeutic stance interested in the embodied experience of the client and includes contextual factors shaping the client/therapist field. This dialogical stance has the therapist as a nonjudgmental present other, who is able to hold the client's wants and needs at the center of the work.
fat, obesity, shame, embodiment, emotional eating, repression, otherness, phenomenology, field theory, presence, fat activism
Copyright © 2021 by The Pennsylvania State University. All rights reserved.
2021
The Pennsylvania State University
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