Embodiment, Lived Experience and Anorexia: The Contribution of Phenomenology to a Critical Therapeutic Approach

Abstract

In this piece we will consider the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty as it relates to critical psychology and also discuss the possibility of its use as a theoretical framework for empirical studies. We will focus specifically on Merleau-Ponty’s concepts of perception and embodiment and ask what these may add to perspectives within critical psychology. In terms of these concepts, Merleau-Ponty offers a radically different view of perception from that which is common in mainstream psychology, along with a radically different view of human embodiment. Given this, we believe that many of his ideas are important for critical psychology and could give it an alternative direction. Phenomenological perspectives are also of use in critical, empirical studies, and here we use the concepts of perception and embodiment to reassess the literature on anorexia nervosa. It is our contention that these concepts allow us to rethink the embodied nature of anorexia, particularly in terms of the way that the body is conceptualised in the clinical literature, but also the absence of a notion of the lived body from some feminist accounts.