Positioning relapse and recovery through a cultural lens of desire: A South Australian case study of disordered eating

Abstract

This article explores how desire operates in the daily lives of women with disordered eating. Based on qualitative findings from a South Australian study investigating why women with disordered eating are reluctant to seek help, we trace the multiple "tipping points" and triggers that are central to participants' everyday experiences. Employing anthropological interpretations of desire, we argue that triggers are circulations of productive desire, informed by cultural values and social relations, and embodied in routine daily acts. We examine the cultural-work of desire and the ways in which gendered relationships with food, eating and bodies trigger desires, creating a constant back and forth movement propelling participants in multiple directions. In conclusion, we suggest that a socio-cultural approach to desire in disordered eating has clinical implications, as cultural configurations of desire may help to understand ambivalence towards relapse and recovery.

What are we aiming for? Exploring tensions in healthcare provider perspectives on and communications about eating disorder recovery

“…This is encouraging, given the centrality of the development of trust within eating disorder treatment contexts in order to scaffold positive experiences (Holmes et al, 2021) and the importance of collaborative care for improving treatment outcomes (Geller et al, 2021). Getting on the same page about what recovery is, and the role of the eating disorder in a person's life – the things that “pull people back and forth between pleasure and danger, relapse and recovery” (Musolino et al, 2018, p. 547) – may be core to establishing lasting recoveries (Musolino et al, 2016). However, despite agreement about the importance of using recovery conversations to anchor collaboration, the data were saturated with tensions and contradictions about the what of recovery – tensions that align with broader conversations in eating disorder treatment, research, and advocacy settings (Bardone-Cone et al, 2018).…”

“…Critical feminist articulations of recovery have highlighted how social worlds – including social media like YouTube (Holmes, 2017) and Instagram (LaMarre & Rice, 2017), broader dynamics around food and eating (Musolino et al, 2016; LaMarre & Rice, 2016), and clinical articulations of recovery (Shohet, 2007, 2018) – come to shape people's experiences of recovery. People seeking to recover from eating disorders encounter “competing and complex meanings of bodies, food, health, illness, recovery, and relapse” (Musolino et al, 2018, p. 547). Recoveries are wrapped up in ideas about what it means to “be healthy” and “be well”, which can make recovery feel like swimming against the current (Hardin, 2003; LaMarre & Rice, 2016; Malson et al, 2011; Musolino et al, 2016).…”

“…Many HCPs discussed the need to "manage expectations" for clients, such as not downplaying the time and effort recovery takes or the potential for lapses along the way. These lapses might be positioned within the broader sociocultural context wherein people are pulled toward enacting behaviours around food and eating which have come to be culturally normative (Musolino et al, 2018(Musolino et al, , 2020. "Managing expectations" might thus be considered a step toward care that takes into account the ways in which eating disorder recovery entails engaging with instructions for health that run counter to dominant dictates for health (LaMarre & Rice, 2016).…”

Holistic nursing care for people diagnosed with an eating disorder: A qualitative study based on patients and nursing professionals' experience

“…3 Eating is an act that goes far beyond fulfilling our biological needs; it involves a series of meanings and social, cultural, affective, symbolic, health, and religious implications that condition and determine the act in itself. [4][5][6] The influence that the social sphere exerts on determining the acceptable or desirable physical image, as well as on determining the healthy and the pathological, exhibits the importance of these factors for health and it may play an important role in the development of certain conditions as Anorexia Nervosa (AN), Bulimia Nervosa (BN) or Binge Eating Disorder (BED). 4,6 EDs constitute the third most prevalent illness among the adolescent population.…”

“…Eating is an act that goes far beyond fulfilling our biological needs; it involves a series of meanings and social, cultural, affective, symbolic, health, and religious implications that condition and determine the act in itself 4–6 4,6 .…”