Author: Leonie Hellwich
Editor: Haytham Malik
Photo Courtesy: The Wheeler Centre
I had the honour of meeting Susie Orbach in her residence in North London to ask her some questions concerning her most recent book Bodies, which deals with body image, transforming bodies, and the subsequent impact on our sense of self. Having worked as a psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, and journalist and after publishing several books, she has always been very outspoken about directing attention towards emerging psychological patterns and their underlying causes. She especially focuses on women’s issues and how their needs are being addressed in therapeutic settings.
As she explains, her involvement started with the emergence of second wave feminism in the 1970s. Orbach’s academic interests aligned with fellow students of the women’s studies program, specifically with how women internalised patriarchal structures. She explains how, alongside her fellow researchers – particularly Luise Eichenbaum and Carol Bloom –, she then started to “think about emotional development, how we needed to refigure the psychoanalytic canon, and how we needed to look at the themes that were particularly perplexing to women – whether it was their relationship to bodies or their relationship to insecurity or envy or competition or jealousy or anger.” Patriarchal structures were found to be concrete structures inside of people as much as the concrete structures outside.
Dismantling those structures and increasing the public’s awareness of their impact has since led her to cofound The Women’s Therapy Centre (1976) with Luise Eichenbaum and to publish literature enabling the public to understand the cause of emerging women-specific issues (see Fat Is a Feminist Issue) and the realities of therapy (see In Therapy).
In terms of the causes of a developing body-mind disconnect, she describes that the turning point came by examining the structural role of the mother and the roots of associated feelings. Orbach argues: “She [the mother] is culture. […] She doesn’t instruct us in culture.
She didn’t instruct us to be messed up about our body. She didn’t instruct us to do anything, but her own experience of living in a particular historical moment or a class background or racialized situation would be who she was, and therefore it would be in the very early mother-daughter relationship.”
The significance of such early influences becomes apparent in her encounters with patients, she illustrates how she believes body and mind are absolutely connected: “The legacy that therapists come into is that the mind trumps the body. But my experience of the last thirty years is that body troubles are trumping mind problems.” According to Orbach, the impact of bodily issues goes far beyond the patient’s body in therapy; “Therapy impacts the person, the therapist, and they will, of course, have to think about what that impact is. But that impact is
also on therapist bodies, not just on their minds.” In Bodies, Orbach gives examples for therapy sessions that affected her physically and how in certain sessions from the therapist’s viewpoint, one can feel as if they are holding the person’s pain and sharing their bodily discomfort.
What she frequently highlights is how our bodies and our body image are shaped by how they are treated in childhood by caregivers. One striking example found in Bodies is the story of Gina and Wendy, who develop a very unique relationship that illustrates how bonds are shaped by bodily interactions in real-life. As Gina was adopted by Wendy at the age of ten, they struggled to develop a body-to-body relationship from scratch. Recognizing the importance of this early contact inevitably leads to the question whether its lack can be overcome and whether it is possible to heal from traumatic separations or missing physical intimacy over time. Here, Orbach emphasises the role of therapy as a tool to discover and question oneself and one’s relationships: “I believe healing is maybe not the right word, I think what therapy does is address things. It finds ways of not hiding and, […] finds ways of recognizing and acknowledging some of the hurt or disjuncture or the awkwardness or defensiveness […] and in that process can undo some of the defence structures that come about so that a growth can occur. It [Therapy] is healing the responses to it.”
Orbach describes recent developments concerning our relationship with our bodies as worrying. In light of recent, rapidly emerging issues of how bodily issues are treated for queer, trans or disabled bodies, Orbach agrees with a notion outlined in Queering psychotherapy by Jane C. Czyzselska which states: “Unregulated shame states are likely to constitute a disorganizing force in the bodyminds of children, for whom parts of self must remain hidden or split off particularly for those with multiple intersectionality identities.” Respecting
said identities is crucial to Orbach, which to her also means taking a stand in the debate about the Gender Recognition Reform which would enable trans people to legally change their gender without having to endure the process of obtaining a medical report. “I’m not up for the medical diagnosis. I’m up for self-certification. I’m not up for the age.” She says about herself: “I totally know who I was at 16.”
She continues to describe how society has undergone many changes since she started working in the field, developments that come with a greater range of opportunities but also potential downsides: “Now, there are so many categories of identities, a lot of labels and frozen. And they’re very useful in the short term, but they’re not so useful in the long term, in terms of development. […] So how do we have identities that are flexible and allow for
differences, rather than saying this within them?”
Observing the role of the media, Orbach describes it as a rather ambivalent influence: “Has there been an increased variety of bodily portrayals? – Yesand no. That is the problem. The body is for sale, we live in late capitalism. It’s still about display and not about living from a body.” She identified the new technologies of the body as particularly problematic: “You can have a new heart, you can have a new labia…”
Taking in the complex beliefs we have internalised about our bodies and which Orbach describes as ultimately detrimental for ourselves and others; what lies within our power as an individual? What can be done to distance oneself and break free from them? Orbach’s advice is simple but poignant. Trying to reject those ideas that we are exposed to, is a struggle and easier to face alongside others, within a group. She rejects the popular idea of body positivity: “It does not take into account the pain and the struggle (that come with this process).” Not acknowledging this will not help with overcoming and dismantling, instead she says goodbye on a rather uplifting note and leaves us with a reminder: “Allow yourselves to risk being in the bodies you have.”
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