Richard Lloyd Jones: This is episode 12 of our Healing Through Consciousness podcast series. We can be mistaken for thinking health is solely physical, but mistaken is the correct word. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones. We've been focusing on more specific health situations in our series lately, and we'll continue that today with an expansive look at eating disorders. You may know someone dealing with this neurosis. It's all too common today. And you'll find an abundance of treatments for this, most of them physical.
ranging from highly elaborate nutritional plans to pills to acupuncture to removing part of the stomach. And the explanations for the problem are diverse as well. But the view explored from the psychosomatic department of the Kepi and Pacheco Trilogical College offers a deeper perspective, too often missing from the conversation. Dr. Claudia Bernhard Pacheco heads up that department, expertly oriented by Dr. Norberto Keppe, 94, and still active and adding to his remarkable science daily. Dr. Claudia, this is a difficult thing to get a handle on, isn't it?
Cláudia Bernhardt Pacheco: It is a difficult problem to deal with because it involves psychogenetic basis, socioeconomic values, family philosophy of life, and psychological deeper problems. And it is not advisable to fight the symptoms, increasing diets and being worried with what you eat and so forth. Because if you are focusing on the symptom, the problem will increase in intensity. The more you push yourself to diet or to correct your eating habits, focusing on this problem itself, the problem will get worse
and worse. Could I
Richard: talk about a specific example, Claudia, that might help us define your explanation a bit? There was a woman I was reading about and she said, I know I shouldn't have dessert if I want to lose weight, but I go ahead and have that bowl of ice cream anyway. I feel awful afterwards And I should feel awful because I let myself down.
Cláudia: Eating disorders are the same as sexual disorders, spending too much money or people too much attached to money
or to sex or to any material things. If you get addicted, these are all external manifestations of an internal unbalance. When someone comes to me and they have eating disorders, We have to see deeper down what does it mean that food that they have problems with. Because we are mostly spiritual beings, not material beings. If we have some eating disorders, this is just showing something that spiritually is going wrong. We know that we should behave or feel in one direction.
We do the opposite. And we don't want to deal with that. And this is very much linked to what Kepi discovered deep down in ourselves, which is the inversion process. Eating disorders, for me, shows an enormous unsatisfaction deep down with the lifestyle of American people. Because if people feel anxious, there is something missing in their lives. They are not satisfied. they want to calm down their anxiety, their insatisfaction, their fears, but mostly insatisfaction. And this unsatisfaction brings the notion of being hungry.
I need something.
I need to fulfill something that is missing. And this that is missing is not food. It's not something material, because we are mostly spiritual beings. And if our spiritual needs are not being satisfied, we will need to compensate it. But we try to compensate invertedly with material things, money, food, sex, or other habits, escaping habits. And when we speak about spiritual, I'm not saying that people should go more to churches or read the Bible or having more spiritual practices. It's not that simple.
We are spiritual beings,
meaning that we are transcendental beings. We are energetic beings. We are psychological beings. We live from the spiritual energy, which is linked to good feelings, love, which is linked to truth, to the right thoughts, using correctly our intelligence, and mostly through pure action, which involves all the other aspects of ourselves. So if we are not in pure action, if we are not doing good, beautiful things, useful, meaningful things in our lives, then we will really feel very unsatisfied. And I would add something which is deeply
psychological in ourselves. And this is present in all human beings, which is the problem of envy. People manifest a lot of envy in this society, the way it is oriented, because the way you look is more valuable than what you do of useful for other people and yourself. So the role you play in society nowadays is much more connected to serving this mask, to serving the powerful, to serving the appearance. It's all money and material related things.
So you envy people a lot if they look more like the fashion magazines show you should be like or your friends or your neighbor. So envy is very much related to this in terms of no matter who you are, no matter how beautiful you can be, no matter how thin and elegant you can be, the other one is always better than you are. So envy is present. People tend to think that the sensorial pleasure is more important than the psychological, spiritual pleasure.
Very few people look for this because of this inversion of super value they give to material aspects and to sensorial pleasure. Self-destructive, by the way, like a cigarette. And then you take in something that is going to poison your body. And it's a pleasure because all sensorial pleasure in terms of being an addiction is a pleasure to destroy. It's something very sick and weird in ourselves. But there is such a thing, a psychological problem, which is inversion.
Richard: Dr. Kepi has talked about this a lot in his work, that the will of the human being is inverted away from happiness and towards this pleasure you're talking about, which is always a more ephemeral, transitory thing. It's not something permanent, like happiness would come from the fulfillment of doing something good, of developing yourself, of helping other people. It's more the immediate pleasure, oh, there's some chocolate, I'll take it now.
Cláudia: Yeah, so if I feel this feeling of hunger, then I have to stop and not eat and see what comes to the surface,
an anxiety, and what is behind the anxiety. So in analysis, in integral psychoanalysis, we have to check this. What is behind this anxiety? Some unsatisfaction, something is missing. And many times people associate food with love, affection, inner comfort, and they will never get this from food. They will get this through other means, which are mostly psychological. So if I am missing love and affection, it's because I am in a denial of giving love and affection, not receiving,
but also not receiving, not accepting. So if I do not accept, if I do not live affection, love, and doing good and being good, so I will miss that in my life.
Richard: And that brings to a close our 12-part series on Healing Through Consciousness, health from an integral psychoanalytical perspective that's providing remarkable health benefits to thousands with zero medication, not a small thing. And there are trilogical psychoanalysts available to help you, too. If you're interested in more of Dr. Pacheco's landmark work in psychosomatics,
Dr. Pacheco's Instagram page is also filling up with content. Check that out at hashtag claudiabarenhart.pacheco. We also offer free reading groups in English on Dr. Norberto Keppe's work.
We are producing fresh content regularly. If you have any specific questions you'd like us to address or topics you'd like
us to consider, email. Again, that's joneshealing at gmail.com. Great to have you along with us. Please let us know what you think and talk to you next time on Thinking With Somebody Else's Head. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones.
