Steven LevenkronReseñas

A psychotherapist and leading expert on anorexia nervosa, Steven Levenkron now speaks clearly and compassionately to families and the medical community about the causes, coping strategies, and successful treatments for this insidious and deadly disease. He offers real-life case histories ranging from adolescence to mid-life, and includes important information on bulimia, the abuse of laxatives, and diuretics. Selected Reading Questionnaire.

I read this well over two decades ago so I don't remember a whole lot...except that it was even worse than the book it's a sequel to, _The Best Little Girl In The World_. Both books tend (or at least, it seems to me) to sensationalize eating disorders rather than honestly explore the issues surrounding anorexia and bulimia.

One of the worst novels I've ever read about eating disorders and yet it somehow has this hypnotic hold over the reader...a much, much better novel is _Winter Girls_ by Laurie Halse Anderson. It does not glamorize anorexia nor make it seem like something good...or something off of a "pro-ana" website. Levenkron's novel, unfortunately, is like a play-by-play manual...overrated and well-known for all the wrong reasons.

Outdated and not much useful advice in here for anybody who suffers or thinks they may suffer from OCD. Except that apparently I can blame my parents for all of my problems.

For the first third of this book, I was thinking to myself that it was written for concerned parents and teachers to give to girls who were cutting themselves. I didn't cut myself as a teenager (I did other stuff) but if I'd been given this book, I would have thought it was ultra-patronising and dumbed down so you wouldn't miss the point. I nearly put it down at this stage, but not having anything else light in the house to read over lunch I perservered, and I am so glad I did.

The author really knew his stuff, he knew about teenage girls, about the inner satisfaction of self-mutilation and just what group therapy is really all about, how it works. I would recommend it to anyone with a spare couple of hours and an interest in the subject, except for troubled adolescents, this would definitely make you look out-of-touch and uncool to give it to them.

Read this book to death in high school (I think I actually ended up stealing it from the library).

This book touches extremely touchy topics. Anorexia Nervosa is a serious disorder, and many people fight with this disorder everyday. This story revolves around a girl named Francesca. She is 15, and weighs 81 lbs. at her lowest. Her parents force her to eat, sleep, drink, and other things that teenagers should be doing, but that her least priority. She suffers from something that could potentially take her life, and nobody knows how serious it really is until she is forced to quit the things she loves most.

It's always a bit hard to objectively rate a book when you've gone to it looking for help and all you've found is information. Or at least, maybe just the wrong kind of information, and it's not as if the information here hasn't been helpful--it's helped me pretty solidly establish that I (who has been struggling with some dark thoughts and tendencies of late) really don't fit the classic profile of a "cutter" (how come we can't say 'retard' but we can say that? I prefer 'person who cuts themself'); that the reasons they cut don't match the reasons I've been having these urges*; that the relief they get from the practice doesn't match the pain I've been feeling about these urges; and that the programme of treatment laid out by Levenkron, of establishing the therapist as a "friendly, bossy" authority figure with whom the sufferer can identify and whom they will want to please enough to stop cutting, then gradually reconstituting their personality and ability to tend to their own emotional needs through talk and self-examination, doesn't match me either--if anything, my personality is TOO strong and integrated, and has difficulty with those parts of itself that can neither be expelled nor integrated. Not gonna just roll over and do what a therapist tells me, for good and ill. But Levenkron did leave me feeling like cutting or precutting isn't what's going oon with me, which was a service.


So, objectively, then? This book is a sensitive look at the classic profile of a person who cuts (abused by parents, totally untrusting of the world, thrown back on inadequate resources to deal with their pain); the reasons they cut (relief from emotional pain in physical pain); and a programme of treatment about which I have mixed feelings--the thing of telling them what they're going to be, and especially the way Levenkron represents it in his little heuristic dialogues in the text, strikes me as reprehensible from a, like, existential-freedom perspective--help me get better WITHOUT taking away my autonomy, healer, or you're just doing me new injury. And you can't expect some psychologist to have an ear for the rhythm of dialogue, but the toca-toca challenge-and-response dynamic Levenkron sets up in what are undoubtedly composed or at least heavily massaged "real life" exchanges also troubles--all he has to do is say one obvious thing, once, and they all cry and say "nobody's ever said that to me before", and then they are his. There's something eeever so slightly Svengali, or even BDSM, in his comfort with cajoling people into handing over their autonomy and then remaking them, that in the context of self-mutilation can't help but feel sick and sad. But he does stress that this programme isn't meant for everybody, just for cutters, who have already lost their autonomy to their habit; so maybe I'm not qualified to judge. After all, I'm not a cutter.


If you have someone in your life who has fallen prey to "this dark adolescent practice" (adolescent only?), this book, read with a critical spirit, could plausibly be valuable orientation.

*And if you find this coy, or worry, don't, in both cases; I'm not cutting and never have, I'm talking to a psychologist about this darkness, and I'd just rather not discuss it here and now beyond the necessary to write an honest review.

Very accurate and detailed account of living with OCD and treating it. The accounts of various patients and how he helped them deal with and recover from OCD I found very intriguing in my research into a compulsive disorder that has a mislead social view. Like many issues in the realm of mental health.

As well, the reasons of why this disorder takes hold of someone, and the impact and dynamics in a family that can create a predisposition to this condition or more likelihood of suffering from it and why. As well as the staggering increase of this condition in the 1900's and I am sure into the new millennium.

This book was very well researched and interesting to read. There were several accounts from women surivivors of childhood sexual abuse from their time in counselling with Author and counsellor, Dr.Steven Levenkron. The stories of these women were difficult to read due to the subject matter and descriptive detail, but very accurate dipictions of the variety of issues and just how damaging and rampant childhood sexual abuse is.

It's important to get the message out there that people, both women and men equally can recover from the horrors they experienced as children and live full lives as adults with proper counselling and medication therapies where needed.

Also his book went through the struggles that survivors go through, with human faces for examples of cases where people have been helped to heal from their pasts of childhood sexual abuse. And the struggles that people go through on the road to healing and recovery.

I have suggested it to others like myself, who are recovering and working to heal from sexual abuse in their pasts.

This captivating novel takes a close look further into the issues many young girls struggle with today. Francesca is a thriving adolescent dancer, faced with the many pressures to acheive the image of "perfection". As Francesca begins to build and get trapped in her own world of obsession, and starts to literally fade away, she creates an alter-ego, named Kessa. Kessa doesn't need to eat; eating is messy, greedy and unnecessary. In Kessa's eyes, 'thinner is the winner'. Through this heart-felt novel, you will come through and learn more about the obsession that kills, and about a girl who merely escaped the grasp it held upon her.

I was expecting this book to be really cheesy, and it was in spots, but in general it was better than I expected. The descriptions of the mental process you go through were pretty spot-on for my experience (it might be different for other people, of course). I'm all for anything that increases awareness of self-injury, even if it's kind of cliched. I appreciated the fact that the ending admitted that it was something she would have to continue dealing with. A word of warning: there are a couple of scenes near the beginning that have the potential to be very triggering.

This young adult book examines the mind of a young anorexic girl. While it is a compelling read for the under 15 set (who tend to read it for ideas more than anything else), it does not age well.½

This book is about girls who have trouble socializing and making friends because of their pushy parents. I recommend people read this book if they self-mutilize themselves or people who are interested in people hurting themselves. This book will never want you to stop reading. For me I couldn't stop because my mind wanted to see what she was feeling. I could not because i have never and will never cut myself. If i knew that this book was about self-destruction then I wouldnt even have picked it up from the shelf. (192-192)

This book felt too much like the author had taken the DSM definition of anorexia and written a book around it, without any understanding of what it's actually like other than that definition. Everything resolves itself way too quickly and easily to be believable too. I went into this book with admittedly mediocre expectations, and that's about what I left it feeling.½

Informative book about self-injury, not as good/helpful as some others I've read.

This book deals too much with the cliches of anorexia to be of much interest. Of the case studies presented, only one male example was provided. In his case he had stopped eating due to a digestive disturbance he had been suffering from, & not any conscious desire to stop eating. The other case studies fell under the perfectionists, &/or incest victims.