Main description:

The recovered possess the key to overcoming anorexia. Although individual sufferers do not know how the affliction takes hold, piecing their stories together reveals two accidental afflictions. One is that activity disorders-dieting, exercising, healthy eating-start as virtuous practices, but become addictive obsessions. The other affliction is a developmental disorder, which also starts with the virtuous-those eager for challenge and change. But these overachievers who seek self-improvement get a distorted life instead. Knowing anorexia from inside, the recovered offer two watchwords on helping those who suffer. One is "negotiate," to encourage compromise, which can aid recovery where coercion fails. The other is "balance," for the ill to pursue mind-with-body activities to defuse mind-over-body battles.

Contents:

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Negotiating Anorexia

PART I: THE DISEASE: AN ACTIVITY DISORDER

Chapter 1. The Person: Working with Interviews

Chapter 2. Medicine: Reworking Cartesian Knowledge

Chapter 3. The Stories: Respecting Diversity

Chapter 4. Bioculturalism: Seeing Holistically and Historically

Chapter 5. Bodily Bent: The Individual's Constitution

Chapter 6. The Activity: How Ascetic Doing Takes Over

Chapter 7. The Core: Elementary Anorexia

PART II: THE LIFECYCLE: A DEVELOPMENTAL DISORDER

Chapter 8. Youth: How Adolescence Invites Anorexia

Chapter 9. Coming of Age: Meeting an Imagined Real World

PART III: MODERN TRADITIONS: CULTURAL PATHS INTO ANOREXIA

Chapter 10. Virtuous Eating: A Modern Morality

Chapter 11. The Conflicted Body: Sympathy and Control as Competing Virtues

Chapter 12. The Attractive Person: A Modern Appearance Ethic

PART IV: RECOVERY: FINDING BALANCE

Chapter 13. Getting Out: Undoing Anorexia

Chapter 14. Staying Out: Redoing Life

Epilogue

References