ABSTRACT

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.

part one|30 pages

Making the connection

chapter one|7 pages

reaching for connection

chapter two|7 pages

hunger in the nursery

chapter three|7 pages

thoughts in search of a thinker 1

chapter four|8 pages

missing links 1

part two|58 pages

‘Thinking’ with the body

chapter five|6 pages

mind on a merry-go-round 1

chapter six|7 pages

thinking alone

chapter seven|7 pages

food for thought 1

chapter eight|10 pages

the ‘toxic container’

chapter nine|6 pages

the ‘closed-circuit loop’

chapter ten|8 pages

no words to say it

chapter eleven|5 pages

the shadow of shame

chapter twelve|8 pages

foreign relations

part three|54 pages

Thinking with the mind

chapter thirteen|7 pages

thinking together

chapter fourteen|8 pages

thinking about thinking

chapter fifteen|9 pages

thinking about feeling

chapter sixteen|10 pages

thinking about eating

chapter seventeen|8 pages

thinking interrupted

chapter eighteen|7 pages

thinking and linking

chapter |4 pages

epilogue