Unrecoverable? Prescriptions and possibilities for eating disorder recovery

LaMarre, A., Rice, C. & Bear, M. (2015). Unrecoverable? Prescriptions and possibilities for eating disorder recovery. In N. Khanlou & F. Pilkington (Eds.), Women's mental health: Advances in mental health and addiction (pp. 145-160). New York, NY: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17326-9_10

Abstract

Introduction: In Western psychology, post-structural feminist scholarship on eating disorders (EDs) has brought to light three key differences between critical and conventional frameworks: differences in understandings of causation and course, in conceptualizations of the normal/pathological divide, and in attendance to lived experiences as a source of scholarly and clinical knowledge and insight.

Main Body: Situating these tensions in our current cultural milieu, which imbues bodies with moral meanings, a possible next step in illuminating ED etiology and recovery is attending to embodied experiences. In this chapter, we examine tensions between biomedical discourses around health/well-being circulating in mainstream culture and prescriptions for ED recovery found in treatment settings. Stepping outside of a biomedical frame, we outline key contributions from post-structuralist feminist perspectives and offer promising directions for future research in this area: rethinking EDs in the context of biopedagogies, or the moralizing instructions for bodies and health that circulate in biomedicalized and neoliberalized contexts such as our own.

Discussion: Noting the ways in which biopedagogies for health differ markedly from instructions for ED recovery, we suggest that there exists, within biomedical treatment regimes, a biopedagogy of recovery that may contribute to the difficulty of “achieving recovery”.

Implications: For those whose bodily experiences do not fit the “expected” course of having/recovering from an ED, attempting to follow a recovery biopedagogy may bring individuals face to face with some of the problematics of (Westernized) societal expectations for “healthy bodies”.