food, eating, emotional needs

Came across this book today, Hunger Strike, by Susie Orbach. It's advertised as being primarily about the origins of anorexic behavior, but it speaks eloquently to many of the ideas I've been trying to express about food, eating, needs for emotional nurturance, mothering, power battles, etc. Some of the passages that struck me:



In the following paragraphs it seems clear that dinner-table power struggles may be more about a mother's need to be in charge somewhere in her life than they are about being a good parent:

p.37: Many parents are able to be relaxed about a child's attitude toward food, but in thousands and thousands of families

She neatly ties together many threads and makes a coherent whole out of behaviors that make no sense when looked at out of context.