This strikes me as an interesting bit of serendipity: just yesterday I was raging against the morbidly obese, and then today, while continuing my reading of “The Great Pain Deception,” I come across the following paragraph.

A small percentage of people prevent healing through repeatedly and unconsciously resisting treatment. A common example is overeating. The conscious-self attempts dieting but suddenly one day she gorges herself on desserts. She has unconsciously rejected the notion of weight loss.

But why has she rejected it?

Her current self image is comforting because it’s known to her. She may fear becoming her true self for fear of succeeding. If she succeeds she is now in the spotlight. … internal conflict rages… because her motivations are instinctively at war.

Ah, the old fear of success which I ruminated on just recently. but why would fear of success cause someone to overeat? I would theorize that the logic goes something like this: the id (the inner brat) wants glory and to be loved by all. The superego condemns this desire because good children sacrifice their wants and needs for the greater whole. How can one ensure they are not at the center of attention (as the superego demands)? By gorging on so much food that they become an obese hippopotamus that nobody wants to look at. (On a related tangent: I think we’ve all heard of molestation and rape victims overeating to — in their minds — make themselves unattractive and not desirable to sexual predators.)

So, I again ask myself, do I set myself up to fail to appease the demands of the superego (e.g. “don’t stand out”)? And do I so callously and deliciously condemn fatties because I recognize that we share a similar avoidance mechanism.

Oh, look, there’s a kitty outside my window!