Susie Orbach Quotes & Sayings

I thought of the analyst Winnicott's observation: 'It is a joy to be hidden but disaster not to be found'. — Susie Orbach

No one likes to feel helpless. We find it psychologically unbearable and inside ourselves we may try to make ourselves part author of our misfortune rather than simply the recipient of it. — Susie Orbach

No one leaves a long-term relationship scot-free or without conflict. — Susie Orbach

The truth is, we don't have an easy language for emotional life. That's why we have writers. — Susie Orbach

Today, 'fat' has become not a description of size but a moral category tainted with criticism and contempt. — Susie Orbach

Consumer society tantalises us. We then try within ourselves to control the needs that are being constantly stimulated. — Susie Orbach

Being able to provoke a different point of view to the standard current ideological or political perspective as played out in conventional newspaper or radio reportage is what a public intellectual does. But it's not merely about being oppositional, because that's too negative. — Susie Orbach

Our idea of a healthy body is so destabilised that insecure people have come to bolster their own bodies by deeming others - those with fat bodies - less worthy, less capable and less employable. — Susie Orbach

Celebrity culture is something that pains me. — Susie Orbach

Public intellectuals come from a range of areas and use their expertise to comment more widely than just their field. They want to make a contribution to public space, and they stick their necks out to do it. — Susie Orbach

There is no such thing as a neutral therapist. — Susie Orbach

Emotional Literacy means being able to recognise what you are feeling, so that it doesn't interfere with thinking. It becomes another dimension to draw upon when making decisions or encountering situations. Emotional expression by contrast can mean being driven by emotions, so that it isn't possible to think. These two things are often confused, because we are still uncomfortable with the idea of the validity of feelings. — Susie Orbach

For a young woman today, developing femininity successfully requires meeting three basic demands. The first of these is that she must defer to others, the second that she must anticipate and meet the needs of others, and the third, that she must seek self-definition through connection with another. The consequences of these requirements frequently mean that in denying themselves, women are unable to develop an authentic sense of their needs or a feeling of entitlement for their desires. Preoccupied with others' experience and unfamiliar with their own needs, women come to depend on the approval of those to whom they give. The imperative of affiliation, the culture demand that a woman must define herself through association with another, means that many aspects of self are under-developed, producing insecurity and a shaky sense of self. Under the competent carer who gives to the world lives a hungry, deprived and needy little girl who is unsure and ashamed of her desires and wants. — Susie Orbach

Dare to be as physically robust and varied as you always were. — Susie Orbach

I'm the sort of person who likes to undo everything. — Susie Orbach

I think it is one of the capacities of human beings, to create style. — Susie Orbach

A wanted pregnancy as much as a dreaded pregnancy can play differently than all one's previous imaginings. — Susie Orbach

If I were afraid of wrinkles, I'd probably be hiding in a cupboard, because I have a lot of them. — Susie Orbach

In my mum's day, you needed to be beautiful for a very short time to catch your man. It didn't start at six and go on until you're 75, right? — Susie Orbach

I wish we could treat our bodies as the place we live from, rather than regard it as a place to be worked on, as though it were a disagreeable old kitchen in need of renovation and update. — Susie Orbach

The insistence that the commercialisation of the body is a fit subject for political discussion and intervention is well overdue. — Susie Orbach

The analyst's psyche operates as a kind of ... something to hold on to while somebody's going through therapy, if they're deconstructing their own psyche, if that's cracking up in some way, or dissolving. — Susie Orbach

I've always felt very sympathetic from the first days of writing about women that, whatever the woman, whether she is trying to be a woman in the conventional sense or breaking the boundaries, those struggles are quite difficult. — Susie Orbach

I'm a therapist and that fascinates people because they think I carry secrets. — Susie Orbach

I'd like to see much more understanding of emotional issues around hurt, abandonment, disappointment, longing, failure and shame, where they stem from and how they drive people and policies brought into public discourse. — Susie Orbach

Not that it was Twiggy's fault, but the ubiquity of her image created a sense in young women that to be stylish meant to be skinny, flat-chested with an ingenue face and straight hair. — Susie Orbach

I think what's most interesting about me is the work that I do. — Susie Orbach

Boys, young men, men of all ages are being captivated by the new visual grammar which pushes men to pout and posture. — Susie Orbach

Beauty has been democratised. No longer the preserve of movie stars and models but available to all. But while the invitation to beauty is welcomed, it has become not so much an option as an imperative. — Susie Orbach

Fat is a social disease, and fat is a feminist issue. — Susie Orbach

Fat people are so rarely included in visual culture that fat is perceived as a blot on the landscape of sleek and slim. — Susie Orbach

'Skinny' is only one body type. — Susie Orbach

Mothers unconsciously allow more latitude to sons, and open encouragement, and with daughters they treat them as they would treat themselves. — Susie Orbach

Bodies are becoming our personal mission to tame, extend and perfect. — Susie Orbach

Many young girls are constantly consumed by controlling and managing their body image to the extent that they are much more involved in the production of the self than in living. — Susie Orbach

Within every form of oppression lies the seeds of liberation. — Susie Orbach

We accept there's an emotional aspect to life. But we're not very developed in our ways of understanding it. — Susie Orbach

When I was growing up, one or two girls were beautiful, but it was not an aspiration, right? — Susie Orbach

Fat is a way of saying no to powerlessness and self-denial. — Susie Orbach

When they took TV to Fiji they found that after 3 years nearly 12 girls out of 100 were over the toilet bowls with bulimia because they felt inferior. — Susie Orbach

In general, the Western body has become a global brand. — Susie Orbach

There are so many young women who tip over into being a facsimile: they don't really inhabit their lives or their bodies. — Susie Orbach

The parents' job is to be there for their kids, not the other way round. Troubles between parents need to be talked through with friends and not visited on the children. — Susie Orbach

If you continually diet, you are putting your body in a quasi-famine situation. It slows your metabolism down and breaks the thermostat. Diets don't work. They don't help you understand why you're eating more than your body wanted in the first place. — Susie Orbach

We know that ever woman wants to be thin. Our images of womanhood are almost synonymous with thinness. — Susie Orbach

From a child's point of view, there is rarely a great time for parents to separate, even if there has been a lot of commotion and fighting. — Susie Orbach