| Abstract: | To submit personal problems to psychological analysis is no longer to imply that one is emotionally immature. Psychological intervention can be justified rather differently. Since achieving such a negative energy balance necessitates a change in one's behaviour, the behaviour modifier (of whatever psychological persuasion) does have a role to play. The negative energy balance proposition that I have suggested as the basic assumption for psychological intervention may be a sufficient argument for having psychologists involved in weight management; but with benefit of archival records of more than 15 years of an applied psychology of obesity, our contributors are able to delineate many complexities that are now seen to characterize the experience of fatness in children. Donna White discusses the implications for children of our using Stunkard's categorization of levels of obesity. Michael LeBow examines the evidence on the basic question of whether it is dangerous to be an obese child and then proceeds to consider whether it is dangerous to be treated for obesity. Erik Woody reviews the evidence on these and related issues and shows that much of our clinical lore about the obese child is in need of serious revision. And Coates and Thoreson (1981) will encourage us to return more often to a careful individual functional analysis as the basis for design of a client's weight management programme. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
