ABSTRACT
This chapter explores our evolutionary, ancestral and individual relationship with cooking and its symbolic, connecting potential to enhance relational bonding – the Latin word for “company” is con-panis, “with bread.” The author’s journey to develop Kitchen Therapy is charted; her experiences as a child and a mother, working as a cookery teacher and from psychotherapy training. This innovative, creative therapy combines talk therapy with cooking and can take place in the consulting room, dedicated kitchen or community kitchen and can be used with individuals, couples, parent-child pairs, and with groups. The process of cooking taps into deep embodied memories; as Freud saw dreams as the Royal Road to the Unconscious, our relationship with food opens pathways into the inner world where our stories around feeding, cooking and eating continue to nourish (or poison) our lives, from cradle to grave. Kitchen Therapy focuses on the process of cooking over its product, recognising we need both psychological nutrition (love) and physical nutrition (food).
The rationale and practice of Kitchen Therapy is described, with examples from psychotherapy with an individual and in a group setting. An appendix is provided describing how the principles of KT can be used to enhance traditional psychotherapy.
