The Obsession: Reflections on the Tyranny of Slenderness (Paperback)
The Obsession is a deeply committed and beautifully written analysis of our society's increasing demand that women be thin. It offers a careful, thought provoking discussion of the reasons men have encouraged this obsession and women have embraced it. It is a book about women's efforts to become thin rather than to accept the natural dimensions of their bodies--a book about the meaning of food and its rejection.
Kim Chernin is a guest instructor at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute, where she teaches a course in psychoanalytic models with Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer. She is the author of two books about eros and memory, Crossing the Border and Sex and other Sacred Games (with Renee Stendhal); a trilogy of books on hunger, The Obsession, The Hungry Self, and Reinventing Eve; a novel, The Flame Bearers; a memoir, In My Mother's House; a collection of poetry, The Hunger Song; a book about psychoanalysis, A Different Kind of Listening; and a spiritual memoir, In My Father's Garden. She has studed music on her own since the age of seven, when she first began to play the piano.