Of human bondage : investigating the relationship anorexia nervosa/ bulimia, spirituality and the body-self alliance
Year: 2011
Type: dissertation
Abstract: A growing body of research recognizes spirituality as a key element in well-being, but the \nagency of individual spirituality remains unclear. This study explores the role of embodied \nknowledge in reality construction and its effect on illness by considering how spirituality as \nembodied existence shapes reality. Spirituality, as a form of embodied knowing, is shown to \nreach deeply into the fundamental relatedness of existence. The study argues for a mindbody- \nspirit unity, making no distinction between self and spirit, emotions and subjective \nexperiences situated in the spirit. As the medium between body and self, spirituality gives \nform to the felt reality of embodied knowledge and meaning, shaping language, cognition, \nthought and action towards lived reality. \nNew ways of thinking about eating disorders were stimulated by innovative discoveries \nthrough investigating the lived reality of the illness within an epistemology that included \nsubjective experiences as part of reality. While acknowledging the influence of social \ndiscourse, the study calls for a recognition of vulnerability in the human condition giving rise \nto the embodiment of a wounded self or disenabling spirituality, manifested in the \ndevelopment of an eating disorder. It uncovers the anti-spiritual properties involved in the \nlived reality of people struggling with anorexia/bulimia, evident in social withdrawal and/or \nself-injury. Behavioural patterns of obsession and repetition underscore similarities to \naddiction and ritual. \nThe study synthesised pastoral therapy and research. A postmodern approach to illness and \na qualitative design with interpretive phenomenology were used. Three young women \nstruggling with anorexia/bulimia participated in semi-structured research interviews. Their \nnarrative accounts provided a chronology of developing, living with and healing from \nanorexia /bulimia. Emphasis shifted from an approach aimed at fixing the body to focusing on \nindividual experiences of the illness; what she brought to the encounter in her own resources \nand potential to heal. Healing is envisaged as the ongoing development of a renewed sense \nof self, an inherently spiritual process orchestrated from within. Previous disassociation of \nbody and self is replaced with reconnection between body, self and other, care of the spirit \nbecame care of the body, expressed in harmony and wholeness of being.
Author: Joan Elizabeth Collett
Language: English
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2157106266