ABSTRACT

This chapter reviews the professional literature on eating disorder treatment methods. Patients with eating disorders challenge those who treat them because they are frequently at high risk of significantly damaging their health – or killing themselves. Many have seriously distorted views of reality, are extremely defiant, and find it difficult to cooperate with treatment plans. Eating disorders treatment has thus often been authoritarian, characterized by coercion, punishments, invasiveness, and rigid boundaries. Such methods are completely inappropriate for treatment for survivors of childhood sexual abuse, reenacting the original trauma – in which a responsible, loved adult exploited his authority and wielded power over the helpless child. Those abused by the exploitation of adult power and authority need a therapeutic relationship that will act as a corrective experience to the abuse. This must be based on mutual respect and an equality that shuns power, coercion, and authoritarian control. Accounts given by women themselves of the treatment they received illustrate and substantiate this argument.