The life project account of eating disorders: agency in the pursuit of dietary goals

Synthese 205 (1):1-24 (2025)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Recovery from eating disorders is known to be difficult. Individuals with eating disorders are generally poorly responsive to change: their eating behaviour is rigid, and they are often inflexible as regards their eating-related goals. This opens up questions about their agency in eating. Why do individuals with eating disorders not “just stop” performing problematic eating behaviour, despite the enormous burden this behaviour may inflict in their lives? In this article, we seek to answer this question by providing a clear view of individuals’ own role in the development of and recovery from their eating disorders. Specifically, we adopt a situated perspective on agency to explain the poor responsiveness to change characteristic of these conditions. We suggest that in the pursuit of eating-related goals, individuals with eating disorders develop a project-like relation to eating, which not only pervasively changes the arrangement and content of their lives, but also their lives’ meaning. On this basis, we argue that the goal-inflexibility and rigidity of eating behaviour often ascribed to them might not be grounded in disorders or impairments of agency, but can in fact be understood in terms of their agency in eating. This is what we call the “life project account” of eating disorders.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 101,636

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Eating as a Self-Shaping Activity.Megan A. Dean - 2021 - Feminist Philosophy Quarterly 7 (3).
Responsibility without Blame: Philosophical Reflections on Clinical Practice.Hanna Pickard - 2013 - In K. W. M. Fulford, Martin Davies, Richard Gipps, George Graham, John Sadler, Giovanni Stanghellini & Tim Thornton (eds.), The Oxford handbook of philosophy and psychiatry. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Analytics

Added to PP
2025-01-14

Downloads
5 (#1,754,154)

6 months
5 (#1,056,575)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author Profiles

Cato Benschop
Utrecht University
Annemarie Kalis
Utrecht University

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references