fatness as protection:

UNPACKING THE PSYCHOLOGICAL LAYERS OF OBESITY

It seems that much of what we experience these days is a polarisation between the concrete and the symbolic. In politics the world stage is seeing polarising forces of conservatism and liberalism. In social economics there seems to be an ever-growing disparity between the super rich echelon and the desperately poor. With our bodies it is the same. 

Despite the recognition of rights groups and legal enshrinement, there seems to be an increasing chasm between the objectified body and the symbolic body, especially in the contemporary fight against obesity and the experience of ‘fatness’ in our society. Although there are many socio-economic factors and medical conditions that underly people’s struggle with obesity, the symbolic meaning of ‘fatness’ requires attention to be made conscious and integrated into the individuation journey. 

For many people a layer of fat is a symbolic protection on the body for the protection of the psyche. The fear of emotional penetration or annihilation of the ‘sacred inner’ results in a physical/somatic expression by building the ‘wall of fat’. For others the development of obesity is a result of using food as a way of anaesthetising internal emotions, avoiding the potential overwhelming consequences of consciously experiencing their inner world and affect. Thus the impulse to eat acts like Donald Kalsched’s “internal saboteur”(1). 

Marion Woodman said that “the fat body may be both a womb and a tomb”(2). Through a safe and trusting psychotherapeutic process the person may be guided to look at the internal world, see the Shadow of the body, and move towards awareness, birthing a new relationship with the body. As part of this process it becomes useful to notice the signal anxieties (nervousness, physical feelings of anxiety, hypervigilance, etc) that are linked to deeper felt unmetabolised (3) emotions that are numbed through eating. The imprisonment of soul is released in the courage of the individuation process, and integration of body and soul.

Post written by Konrad van Staden (Clinical Psychologist and Jungian Analyst) for SAAJA. 

1) Kalsched, D in Stein, M : Jungian Psychoanalysis: Working in the Spirit of Carl Jung, Open Court, 2010.

2) Woodman, M. The Owl was a Baker’s Daughter. Inner City Books, 1980.

3) Eigen, M. Emotional Storm. Wesleyan University Press. 2005.