What do you think?
Rate this book
Effective Clinical Practice in the Treatment of Eating Disorders: The Heart of the Matter
This book is the first to address what really happens behind closed doors during eating disorders treatment, as most writing has only addressed theoretical approaches and behavioral strategies. The field has long needed a book that describes the heart of the the therapeutic interventions and interactions that comprise life-changing treatment for this life-threatening disorder. In response to this need, the authors have created a book that reflects the individual therapeutic skills and the collective wisdom of senior clinicians, all of whom have years of experience treating anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating disorder. Intended to be a deeply thoughtful and instructive volume, Effective Clinical Practice in the Treatment of Eating The Heart of the Matter demonstrates the depth, complexity, and impact of the therapeutic process. In particular, the book articulates and explores essential points of information, issues, insights and unresolved questions about eating disorders treatment. Effective Clinical Practice in the Treatment of Eating Disorders describes and explicates important treatment issues and themes in a nuanced, highly contextualized and qualitative manner. The book offers a significant reference for both novice and seasoned therapists, and it includes specific information that will serve to inform and mentor future generations of eating disorders clinicians.
286 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2008
2 people are currently reading
30 people want to read
About the author
Margo Maine
11 books11 followersMargo Maine has specialized in eating disorders and related issues for over 35 years. A Founder and former Adviser of the National Eating Disorders Association and Founder and Fellow of the Academy for Eating Disorders, her most recent book, Hair Tells a Story: Hers, Yours, & Ours (Toplight Books, 2023), explores women’s relationship with their hair, a critical feminist issue and neglected aspect of body image. Dr. Maine is also author of: Pursuing Perfection: Eating Disorders, Body Myths, and Women at Midlife and Beyond; Treatment of Eating Disorders: Bridging the Research- Practice Gap; Effective Clinical Practice in the Treatment of Eating Disorders; The Body Myth; Father Hunger; and Body Wars; and Senior Editor Emeritus of Eating Disorders: The Journal of Treatment and Prevention. The 2007 recipient of The Lori Irving Award for Excellence in Eating Disorders Awareness and Prevention, the 2014 recipient of the Don and Melissa Nielsen Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2015 NEDA Lifetime Achievement Award, Maine has served on many clinical advisory and community boards and is a 2016 Honoree of the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame. She lectures nationally and internationally on eating disorders and maintains a private practice, Maine & Weinstein Specialty Group, in West Hartford, CT. She loves the earth and gets up early every day to celebrate it.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 1, 2019
Great book. As a depth psychotherapist who treats eating disordered patients, I appreciated the holistic and existential framework this book presents, in contrast to the behavioral emphasis traditionally pressed in the treatment of EDs.
September 20, 2025
This text contains 16 chapters written by various mental health professionals. Through the lens of feminist theory, they explore treatment of eating disorders with an emphasis on the importance of therapeutic relationship.
The highlights, for me, were as follows:
Chapter 1 starts with the ominous “Being born female is the single-best predictor of risk for developing an eating disorder”. Risk factors include victimization, financial stress due to inequality in pay, and the juggling of multiple roles in one’s life. A case is then made for why a feminist framework for treatment is superior to the traditional medical model. It did not take them much to convince me of this.
Chapter 2 made me raise my eyebrows more than once. The writer sees eating disorders through a lens of psycho-spiritual dysfunction and treats his patients through a psycho-spiritually centered approach. This may work for folks in which their faith is a central part of their life, but for someone like me it decidedly wouldn’t.
Chapter 4 asserts that eating disorders couldn’t exist without a culture in which there is a “dissonance between biology and social norms that overvalue thinness” and “might not exist at all in a cultural context that did not connect shame and femininity”. Yes.
Chapter 9 explains “binge eaters tend to binge when confronted with unacceptable or intense feelings. Those with bulimia will binge and purge, stuffing down and spitting out not only food but also feelings. Anorexics deny themselves good to exert control over their inner emotional worlds“.
Chapter 10 relays “individuals split off from their emotions when they are unable to verbally process their feelings and split off from their body sensations when they are wounded emotionally, physically, sexually or spiritually”.
Chapter 11 reminds us “in all their forms, eating disorders offer a creative form of adaptive dissociation” and that “after years of living with dissociation as a defense and lifestyle, women often have no idea that their eating disorder is related to issues from early childhood experiences, shame-based historical patterns, or trauma”. The disorders were “developed over time to protect against painful, difficult, and potentially overwhelming feelings, even in spite of the self-destructive behaviors and self-defeating feelings it engenders”.
It is therefore the task of an eating disorder therapist to help a patient become re-embodied, to be able to safely feel and deal with their feelings using new coping techniques. Not an easy task, and one that can take years to complete. Thank goodness there are therapists out there doing this work.
The highlights, for me, were as follows:
Chapter 1 starts with the ominous “Being born female is the single-best predictor of risk for developing an eating disorder”. Risk factors include victimization, financial stress due to inequality in pay, and the juggling of multiple roles in one’s life. A case is then made for why a feminist framework for treatment is superior to the traditional medical model. It did not take them much to convince me of this.
Chapter 2 made me raise my eyebrows more than once. The writer sees eating disorders through a lens of psycho-spiritual dysfunction and treats his patients through a psycho-spiritually centered approach. This may work for folks in which their faith is a central part of their life, but for someone like me it decidedly wouldn’t.
Chapter 4 asserts that eating disorders couldn’t exist without a culture in which there is a “dissonance between biology and social norms that overvalue thinness” and “might not exist at all in a cultural context that did not connect shame and femininity”. Yes.
Chapter 9 explains “binge eaters tend to binge when confronted with unacceptable or intense feelings. Those with bulimia will binge and purge, stuffing down and spitting out not only food but also feelings. Anorexics deny themselves good to exert control over their inner emotional worlds“.
Chapter 10 relays “individuals split off from their emotions when they are unable to verbally process their feelings and split off from their body sensations when they are wounded emotionally, physically, sexually or spiritually”.
Chapter 11 reminds us “in all their forms, eating disorders offer a creative form of adaptive dissociation” and that “after years of living with dissociation as a defense and lifestyle, women often have no idea that their eating disorder is related to issues from early childhood experiences, shame-based historical patterns, or trauma”. The disorders were “developed over time to protect against painful, difficult, and potentially overwhelming feelings, even in spite of the self-destructive behaviors and self-defeating feelings it engenders”.
It is therefore the task of an eating disorder therapist to help a patient become re-embodied, to be able to safely feel and deal with their feelings using new coping techniques. Not an easy task, and one that can take years to complete. Thank goodness there are therapists out there doing this work.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews