Resisting anorexia/bulimia: Foucauldian perspectives in narrative therapy

Abstract

Foucault's analysis of unseen power as it operates in discourses that construct ‘practices of discipline’ and ‘technologies of the self’ has been a central conceptual resource in the development of narrative therapy. Narrative therapists take the view that ‘unseen’ aspects of power work to construct both how a person understands their situation, and how their relation to ‘the situation’ they find themselves in has been constructed through the discursive resources available to them. If the consequences of the operation of these discursive resources can be brought into view, then new resources may be mobilised to resist the problems that have been created by the ‘power’ of the discursive resources that are available in the status quo of people's cultural milieu. Narrative therapists work to disentangle the person from the problem, against the grain of the common constructions available in the resources of Occidental cultures that work to identify the person as ‘the problem’. This is demonstrated in the assistance they offer to people in finding ways to resist anorexia, by identifying anorexia as the problem, and not the person as anorexic. In this perspective, other apparent tactics of resistance—such as the tactic termed ‘pro-ana’—are revealed as counterfeit, and ultimately supportive of the problem situation.

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