New Ideas about Eating Disorders

Charles T. Stewart is a retired child psychiatrist living in Berkeley, California. He worked in Community Mental Health from 1958-1966 and 1977-1994, where he directed programs, treated patients, consulted with staff, and taught psychotherapy to trainees. From 1966 to 2008 he conducted a private practice in Berkeley, providing psychotherapy to children, adolescents, and adults.

• Beebe, Foreword. Introduction: A Crash Course in Affect Theory. How Emotions Condition the Hunger-satiety Drive: Affect-drive Complexes. Thriving and Not Thriving During Earliest Infancy: Parent-infant Bonding. A New View of the Aetiology of Anorexia and Bulimia: Dissociation of the Hunger-satiety Drive. A Life Dominated by Shame: Pierre Janet's Case of Anorexia: Nadia. Healing Regression to the First Three Months of Life: Marguerite Sechehaye and her Patient Renee. The Bulimia – Anorexia Syndrome and Suicide: Ludwig Binswanger's Case of Ellen West. Psychological Treatment of Eating Disorders: "Solve et Coagula". A Longitudinal Study of Anorexia Nervosa: Sylvia Brody's Subject Helen. Primary Prevention of Eating Disorders: Interest and Joy in Infancy.

"In the literature on psychotherapy, it is a rare author who can motivate us to take up the burden of emotion in a region of experience like eating, where many of us would simply prefer to be unthinkingly happy, but because Charles Stewart does so in a way that makes difficult emotions actually easier to hold, reading his work has the paradoxical effect of actually lightening our load." - John Beebe, From the Foreword."I approached this book as a clinical psychologist whose work includes participation in an eating disorders team at a large state hospital in the Western Cape. I have always been struck by the multi-faceted nature of the phenomenology, aetiology and treatment approaches to do with eating disorders, and at times have wondered if I could attain a more consistent, reliable thread through the maze of theories, treatment approaches and different patients' behaviour and histories (which are also not always completely known). So it was with excitement about 'new ideas' and a desire to improve my knowledge that I read Stewart's book. I was pleased with what I found." - Colin Mitchell, Mantis, Volume 24, No. 1, Summer 2012