Eating Disorders and Child Sexual Abuse

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

   PDF

2. Examining Child Sexual Abuse and Eating Disorders

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

      PDF

   2. Capturing the Research Journey: An Introduction

      • Lisa Hodge

      Pages 3-28

   3. A Story of Language, Meaning and Power

      • Lisa Hodge

      Pages 29-70

3. Part II

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 71-79

      PDF

4. Part II The Women’s Stories

   1. The Female Body as a Site of Opposition

      • Lisa Hodge

      Pages 81-113

   2. Masking the Self

      • Lisa Hodge

      Pages 115-154

   3. Cleanliness and Purification

      • Lisa Hodge

      Pages 155-190

   4. Beauty Politics in Eating Disorders

      • Lisa Hodge

      Pages 191-219

   5. Situating Silence in Child Sexual Abuse

      • Lisa Hodge

      Pages 221-266

   6. Conclusion: Beyond Illness and Pathology

      • Lisa Hodge

      Pages 267-280

This book takes up the challenge of examining women’s understandings of eating disorders and child sexual abuse away from a framework focused on pathology. The central argument is that women’s distress is an enactment of their engagement with certain discourses and practices, rather than a reaction triggered by child sexual abuse. Guided by a contemporary feminist framework and Mikhail Bakhtin’s sociological linguistics, to substantiate the argument, women’s own poetry and drawings are used as evidence to develop, support and supplement research findings. The book establishes that an eating disorder is ‘an understandable response’ to sexual trauma and shifts the focus away from ‘a damaged personality’. Even more importantly, it demonstrates that women with eating disorders are using their bodies as a form of resistance to express silenced traumas that remain in the silenced female body. This is an active way of making sense of experiences of child sexual abuse.

• eating disorders
• self-harm
• child sexual abuse
• sexual trauma
• visual research methodology
• qualitative research
• Bakhtin
• dialogic theory

“The architectural design of the thinking that underpins this exploration of the relationship between child sexual abuse and eating disorders is superb. Hodge draws on Bakhtin, feminist dialogics and the creative arts to produce an imaginative analysis of women’s experiences and accordingly offers a convincing and novel contribution to the field. Undoubtedly this is a methodological masterpiece and a great leap for social work research!” (Professor Charlotte Williams OBE, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia)

“A very well researched and timely book, published when the ‘me too movement’ has brought hidden stories of sexual abuse out of the shadows into public awareness. It should become required reading for training courses for professionals to work directly with women who present with this history. The book clearly portrays the essential principles and strengths of its qualitative methodology, pivoting as it does on phenomenological consciousness, emphasising that the book is about the lived experience of the women themselves. It is their story, about their food related behaviour, which is examined as psychological consequence of sexual abuse, rather than adopting the generic ‘eating disorders’ approach. This gives a powerful account.” (Maye Taylor, BA, MSc, Med, PhD, AFBPsS, UK)

“This vitally important book privileges women’s voices in how they make sense of their own experiences of the connections between ‘eating disorders’ and child sexual abuse, elucidating how women with eating disorders often use their bodies as a form of resistance to express silenced traumas. The book is mandatory reading for anyone who seeks to move beyond the pathologising understandings that currently dominate the field. The depth of critical analysis offered by Lisa Hodge delivers gold star scholarship that points to innovative and creative ways to understand and respond to this important social issue.” (Professor Christine Morley, Queensland University of Technology, Australia)

• Institute for Health and Sport, Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia

  Lisa Hodge

Lisa Hodge PhD, is a research fellow in the Institute for Health and Sport at Victoria University, Australia

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