ent's adoption of a new Self and new ways of being will be seen by the therapist as less than fully honest if the client cannot, or will not, see the grand connection that Cruse sees between the spiritual and the mundane, can't or won't be "illuminated by a lively awareness", and can't or won't apply that understanding to his or her values and daily living.
When a personal spiritual philosophy defines the foundation for one's treatment philosophy, then spirituality, as benign as its proponents may present it, becomes a religion, that most undesirable construct that Cruse defines as "relating to or manifesting faithful devotion to an acknowledged reality or deity." I believe that it is my moral obligation as a therapist to own my bias and then get out of my patient's way. Cruse can't get out of her patient's way because her way, in fact, The Way, is her life lens and her treatment philosophy.
Cruse's book is saturated with A.A. philosophy, which doesn't work for many women because it advocates "turning it over" to a higher power. That may work for men who are raised to take control of their lives, but for women who are still raised to be co-dependents in marriage, how can turning it over be a good thing? There are numerous anecdotal and published accounts by women who have "failed" in A.A., but have succeeded in woman-centered empowerment programs. I reject any treatment philosophy that does not take this point into consideration.
Every year in the United States millions of people suffer from eating disorders. More than 90 percent of those afflicted are adolescent and young adult women (Hoffman, 1994, p. 1).
Approximately 1 percent of adolescent girls develop anorexia nervosa, a condition in which they can literally starve themselves to death, and "eventually half of those with anorexia will develop bulimia" (Hoffman, 1994, p. 4). Bulimia nervosa afflicts 2 percent to 3 percent of young women and involves excessiv...