ABSTRACT
Jung’s analytical psychology forms the foundation of my work and my thinking about the psyche, psychic life, dreams, therapy, symptoms. In my Jungian world, I accept that we develop symptoms when we are stuck in old patterns and fail to integrate creative potentials within our personality. Symptoms are not to be avoided or downplayed; their meaning needs to be discovered in order for healing to take place. In that way of understanding life, I accept that my fat is meaningful, but does that also mean that my fat is a symptom of something, that it is not merely one of several basic ways of being, of type of body? Perhaps being fat gives rise to a variety of symptoms? Or maybe it is the experience of being fat, of the daily trauma of membership in a stigmatized group that creates symptoms?
