Father Hunger

The first edition of this book added the term ''father hunger'' to everyday language, to explain the emptiness, and resulting food and body-image disorders, experienced by women with physically or emotionally absent fathers. Based on ten years of further study, this Second Edition of Father Hunger details the origins of the syndrome and its effect on the family, with new practical solutions to help dada and daughters understand and improve their relationships. Dr. Maine also introduces the concept of ''Global Girls'' which describes today's adolescents in terms of the globalization of media, corporate marketing, and body image. An expanded section for educators and therapists offers strategies and techniques for preventing impasses in treatment. REVIEWS. . .''The book offers healthy, well-balanced advice to family members and health practitioners. It is a unique book not only for its clinical insights for therapists but also for school counselors and educators as well. '' - Karen H. Jones, Ph.D., The Prevention Researcher ''Fact one; Dads tend to withdraw from girls during adolescence. Fact two; Adolescent girls too often develop unhealthy eating behaviors. Put these two ideas together and you get a fascinating book called Father Hunger.'' - Daughters; A newsletter for parents of girls ages 8-18 ''Dr. Maine does a nice job of integrating psychological and sociological research into her material. An important contribution of work in this area, suitable for community college students and up.'' - Choice ''Practical advice to help readers understand and improve father-daughter relationships, and helps families at multi-generational levels to reconnect. - Betitina Wood, Healthline ''I found the book to be 'carefronting' in relationship to my own married daughter and granddaughter. . . an excellent systemic book for therapists as well. . . it has good theory, is reality based, and has practical suggestions. I enjoyed reading this book.'' - Ralph Earle, Ph.D., past-President, American Association of Marriage & Family Therapy ''this powerful book clearly explains how a father's emotional or physical absence can contribute to a daughter's eating problems, body dissatisfaction, and low self-esteem.''

Filled with practical ideas and self-evaluation tools, Father Hunger both encourages and challenges men to "embrace the high calling of fatherhood," becoming the dads that their families and our culture so desperately need them to be.

James M. Herzog's Father Hunger: Explorations with Adults and Children will quickly take its place both as a landmark contribution to developmental psychology and as an enduring classic in the clinical literature of psychoanalysis. We live in an era when a great many children grow up without a father, or, worse still, with fathers who traumatically abuse them. Yet, society continues to ignore the emotional price that children pay, and often continue to pay throughout their lives, for this tragic state of affairs. Father Hunger will change this situation. First drawn to his topic by observing the recurring nightmares of clinic-referred children of newly separated parents - nightmares in which the children's fear of their own aggression was coupled with desperate wishes for their fathers' return - Herzog went on to spend more than two decades exploring the role of the father in a variety of naturalistic settings. He discovered that the characteristically intense manner in which fathers engaged their children provided an experience of contained excitement that served as a necessary scaffolding to the children's emerging sense of self and as a potential buffer against future trauma. A brilliant observer and remarkably gifted, caring clinician, Herzog remains true to the ambiguities and multiple leves of meaning that arise in therapeutic encounters with real people. He consistently locates his therapeutic strategies and clinical discoveries within a sophisticated observational framework, thus making his formulations about father hunger and its remediation of immediate value to scientific researchers. A model of humane psychoanalytic exploration in response to a deepening social problem, Father Hunger is a clinical document destined to raise public consciousness and help shape social policy. And in the extraordinary stories of therapeutic struggle and restoration that emerge from its pages, it is a stunning testament to the resiliency of the human spirit.

"Father Hunger" is the emptiness experienced by women whose fathers were physically or emotionally absent—a void that leads to unrealistic body image, yo-yo dieting, food fears and disordered eating patterns. The term, which is now part of the psychology lexicon, originated with the first edition of this work in 1991. After having completed a decade's worth of further investigation, Dr. Maine has updated the information about men and their daughters in this second edition. She offers a new crash course on being a girl in today's culture, based on her expertise as a leading eating disorders prevention advocate. This edition describes the origins of father hunger and its effect on the family, with even more practical solutions to help fathers and daughters understand and improve their relationships. Also included is an expanded section for educators and therapists to help them more effectively prevent and treat the problems that occur between dads and daughters.

Father Hunger describes the emptiness that many of us experience because we still crave the comfort and security that our fathers did not provide. Your relationship with your father not only affects your emotional style, your relationships with your children and spouse, and your ability to handle life in general, but it deeply affects the way you think about God. If you're looking for a "feel-good" book about father and child relationships, this isn't it... If you and your father have had a little spat and are still holding a grudge against each other, find another resource to help you! This book is for (1) people who, as children, didn't receive the quality and quantity of love they wanted and deserved from their fathers and (2) others who are currently related to such people. Although I have had a wonderful loving father, I have always experienced a certain "father hunger" because he was away so much during my childhood. I now know what I missed. This book offers so much understanding and hope for all who suffer the various emotional pangs of "father hunger." -Gigi Graham Past National Advisor for Women's Affairs, Rapha Robert McGee has zeroed in on a topic that has practical relevance for all of us. He has produced a book that is practical, interesting, creative, and sprinkled with good case histories. I found it to be helpful. I predict you will too. -Gary R. Collins, PhD I can't think of a more timely book than Father Hunger. I am surrounded by people-me included-who have grown up with a hole in their heart from an emotionally or physically absent father. Don't look for quick-fix solutions or pious pronouncements in this book. But if you really want to see the hunger pangs subside, this book is for you. -John Trent Author, Speaker, President of Strong Families

An insatiable need for sex and love. Periods of overeating or starving. A pattern of unstable and painful relationships. Does this sound painfully familiar? Trauma counselor Kelly McDaniel has seen these traits over and over in clients who feel trapped in cycles of harmful behaviors-and are unable to stop. Many of us find ourselves stuck in unhealthy habits simply because we don't see a better way. With Mother Hunger, McDaniel helps women break the cycle of destructive behavior by taking a fresh look at childhood trauma and its lasting impact. In doing so, she destigmatizes the shame that comes with being under-mothered and misdiagnosed. McDaniel offers a healing path with powerful tools that include therapeutic interventions and lifestyle changes in service to healthy relationships. The constant search for mother love can be a lifelong emotional burden, but healing begins with knowing and naming what we are missing. McDaniel is the first clinician to identify Mother Hunger, which demystifies the search for love and provides the compass that each woman needs to end the struggle with achy, lonely emptiness, and come home to herself.

This book explores eating disorders in women as a culturally induced phenomenon the author calls "father hunger", or "relationship disappointment" where fathers are physically, and/or emotionally disconnected from their families. Treatment, solutions, and resolutions are offered for families.

A wrenchingly honest, eloquent memoir “about true nourishment that comes not from [eating] but from engaging on a spiritual path."—Los Angeles Times In this brave and perceptive account of compulsion and the healing process, Bullitt-Jonas describes a childhood darkened by the repressive shadows of her alcoholic father and her emotionally reclusive mother, whose demands for excellence, poise, and self-control drove Bullitt-Jonas to develop an insatiable hunger. What began with pilfering extra slices of bread at her parents' dinner table turned into binges with cream pies and pancakes, sometimes gaining as much as eleven pounds in four days. When the family urged her father into treatment, the author recognized her own addiction and embarked on the path to recovery by discovering the spiritual hunger beneath her craving for food.