Skarderud Finn (Finn Skårderud) in conversation with the English psychologist and writer Susie Orbach (Susie Orbach) — universal hatred of the body.
Susie Orbach: As therapists, we know a lot about what deep down people are fighting. With doctor, today we see the destruction of culture.
Finn Skarderud: This creates a giant problem. 90% of Western girls and women want to change something in your body. This is an extensive opportunities to boys and men become as insecure as the women. We can’t do politics in the offices of physicians. We need to engage in politics outside their borders. We need to make our knowledge in the public space and in government. Psychologically, physically and economically becomes too expensive not to do it now.
Forty years of struggle for our mental health
English psychologist, writer and public figure, Susie Orbach for forty years protecting our mental health. Hot topic steel our bodies, especially the bodies of women.
Soon it will be forty years since she wrote the classic work “fat is a feminist subject” (Fat is a feminist issue). It industry weight loss and eating disorders are considered from the point of view of gender.
The New York Times described Susie Orbach as the most famous psychologist and therapist England after Sigmund Freud. She treated Lady Diana, who was bulimic.
Susie Orbach also actively involved as an international employee in the organization endangeredbodies.org to change, she says, is “body-hatred international” (international international hatred of the body).
Therapy body
Recently, she was one of the main speakers at the festival of psychiatrists “Days of schizophrenia” in Stavanger. There it caused fear among the audience for his statements about the body in a global world nowadays. We met several times during the conference for further conversation.
“The body is yours and mine, baby, pregnant, friends, famous people and princes, is a part of a global interest. We are very is appearance, aging, color, and how we present ourselves. And authorities announce a category and define the norms regarding proper body weight, disease and health, fat and shape. For the body it’s active time. It is therefore not surprising that therapists have to deal with the bodies.”
— What does this mean?
“An important example of how we are destroying our basic relationship to food. We don’t know what and how we should eat. The problems are so great that we have a strong voice to call in the experts — people like you and me. And we got the whole industry eating disorders. The phenomena that several decades ago were perceived as a deviation — for example, extreme diets in the culture of today became a normal phenomenon and partly idealised”.
When we speak about phenomena of the type of eating disorders, it often happens that the person is too occupied with his body in terms of weight and appearance, wants to have a less sensitive contact with your body such as desire, pain or fatigue.
“It is. But the big problem is that what we know as part of the painful phenomena that has become a mass phenomenon. Very often today we are talking about how to shape the body so that it could show. The body becomes a product, a thing, a commodity and a means. The result is someone else related to ourselves. We get uncertain of the body, poor body, fragile body.”
Fake body
We talked with Susie Orbach, Recalling clever British pediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald W. Winnicott (Donald W. Winnicott). Orbach invented the concept of “false body”. This is a further development of the concept of Winnicott “fake yourself”.
We are talking about an unwanted child who met without love and that is why trying to become what others want him to be. “Fake themselves” more interested in the condition of others, not their own.
“Fake bodies we are talking about that we start to look at yourself through the eyes of others, we become very concerned about how others look at us. And it can destroy the pleasure, desire and sensual contact with oneself. Art historian John Berger (John Berger) in the early seventies of the last century described in the book Ways of seeing (Ways of examining), as women since childhood, see themselves as they have to evaluate, how to evaluate them, and how they have to look at yourself as a person consider”.
— This is especially true in social networks. In an attempt to please people start looking at themselves from outside and to make itself its own object.
“This is a photoshop, and it takes two hours to prepare a picture that is laid out in social networks and then waiting for a response. There is one study that shows that a person wants to get about 125 likes, but gets about 25”.
97% trying to lose weight not getting results
— Can you say something about the need to socialize the body?
“Here I turn again to Winnicott: he writes that “no infants”. He means that there is no viable infants without maternal care. I’ll rephrase it and say that “no body”. This means that part of our body is always defined by the relations into which they enter. Major public relations submitted by the industries”.
— What, for example?
“There is a beauty industry that already has a giant scale. She had a high growth rate than other industries, it is gaining new markets, such as little girls and boys. She constantly is finding new ways — such as the growing market for plastic surgery, cosmetic surgery of the labia. Cosmetics is today the fifth largest consumer market of China. There are also industry weight loss. Striking here has always been that it is not valid. In timeaboutthe prospect of 97% trying to lose weight do not achieve results. If the diet acted, the industry would not be so big. The third is the pharmaceutical industry. It produces antidepressants for young girls, weight loss products and drugs. And then another, and a giant the fashion industry. It causes damage to the environment and is social injustice, if you think about the poor people who sleep on the ground, exposing themselves to danger.”
A new form of social control
Here in Stavanger you also talked about globalization, hatred of the body.
“It’s terrible. Western ideals, Western hatred of body and trouble of breaking power is now exported all over the world. Children early learn that the modern body is anything, but not what is given to you: this is something you can work on a sculpture. So we lose a language, we can also lose and body.”
“In Singapore, there is a big industry of Western noses and skin whitening for color, in China many people go into surgery to become ten centimeters higher in South Korea eroding the jaw to be like white people. The parents pay for it. So destroyed culture. It changes the mood and forces — primarily girls — to look at yourself. We see a society where girls finally get the opportunity and right, but where they are tormented by doubts about because of his body, and they become passive. Modern design of the body — a new form of social control. It is also about international trade at black exchange organs for transplantation. It very clearly shows that the body has become a commodity”.
The discontent of the mother can harm the child
Susie Orbach says that we should act as politicians. She does so. One of her new subjects, over which it operates, is dissatisfaction with body pregnant women. As an Advisor to the British authorities, she used the document “Two for the price of one” (Two for the price of one).
The name accurately: way of the mother’s body can protect and child.
“Pregnancy and childbirth was previously free. When did the hatred of the body, this caused problems. This applies particularly to the time of birth. Dissatisfaction with the mother of his body could harm the child. A mother may engage in practices where we are talking about is to distance itself from its natural body. I think very seriously about the Botox on the face of the young mother. A child looking at the mother’s face contact and response to their feelings. And what answer a child may find in Botox smoothed face?”
