Author: LaMothe Ryan
Publisher: Haworth Press
ISSN: 1094-6098
Source: American Journal of Pastoral Counseling, Vol.7, Iss.3, 2005-05, pp. : 3-22
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Abstract
Today pastoral counselors are more comfortable with the idea of eating disorders, though there are a number of parallels between traditional views of gluttony and the research on eating disorders. In this article, I argue that psychodynamic, developmental, and faith perspectives- all of which have physiological, cultural, and familial accomplices- provide the lenses needed to understand gluttony. In brief, a glutton's preoccupation with the pleasure or toxicity of food results from a complex array of factors, including family and cultural deprivation, impingement, and education that distorts a person's self-image and his/her desire, motivation, passion, and meaning. In terms of the dynamics of faith, gluttony is ponderous because the person is unwittingly weighed down by emptiness and loss associated with painful experiences of betrayal, distrust, and hopelessness. The ravenousness of gluttony is the desperate search to fill this emptiness and preserve some measure of trust and fidelity, albeit distorted. Helping people who struggle with eating disorders requires an empathic appreciation of their suffering as well as developing strategies that facilitate a person's movement from a ponderous and ravenous faith to a lively and passionate faith with others.
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