the first part of this book is an incredibly interesting analysis of obesity in women but the further i got into the book, the more i thought it lacked focus. i liked the alternate views on the connection between the psyche and the body in the second part, if you have an interest in esoteric health stuff like ray peat you will get a lot out of that part of the book.
the case studies in the third part were fascinating although one of the women isn't even obese, and the connections from what drives anorexia to what drives obesity, while common-sense, weren't explored enough to warrant it imo. i also thought the two types of obese women (primary obesity is women with a particular family dynamic who fit the normal model of obese women and secondary obesity is women who become obese later in life) warranted much more discussion as this book is mainly about the primary type.
i guess this is my bad for wanting to read this before addiction to perfection but a lot of this book could have been scrapped or condensed to keep the focus on the particular psychology of obese women. in the last couple parts, there's a lot of information on the loss of the feminine and how it might be possible to reconnect with it but as someone with basic knowledge of analytical psychology i found much of it difficult to understand.
i had a personal connection to this book because i went from thin to fat via my thyroid basically shutting down to now normal sized, and the experience of becoming fat was an insane ego death experience that i wish i had some context for while i was going through it. after reading this it is much easier to view the period of my life as having a definite psychic cause, a journey with a purpose and not something to be ashamed of. so as far as eating disorder books go it's advanced reading, but i think woodman is able to give obese women empathy and dignity, and because this is a clinical book it does not have any unhelpful sentimentality for the type of woman who would end up relating to the things talked about in this book in the first place.
I've started to read it and it is trippy. But I think the book is intended for therapists, that's why it assumes the reader already knows Jungian concepts quite well. I honestly was surprised by the pretty sound methodology, with protocol and controls; the data is shared extensively, the reasoning is interesting if you agree with the Jungian frame. The intro is worth it alone to understand the meaning of the title and to read one interesting interpretation of Ophelia.
that makes way more sense! I agreed with everything the author said that I could understand tbh. it also makes sense why there's a case study of an anorexic woman to more concretely draw those parallels for therapists who might be biased