Susie Orbach

Psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, writer, social critic

Psychoanalyst and writer Susie Orbach has been an activist and theorist on issues around the body for over 30 years. Her other interests have centred on feminism and psychoanalysis, the construction of femininity and gender, globalisation and emotional literacy.

Susie co-founded The Women’s Therapy Centre in 1976 and The Women’s Therapy Centre Institute, New York, in 1981. She is convener of Anybody, an organisation which campaigns for body diversity. They are co-hosting ‘Endangered Species’, an international summit in London and New York in March 2011 which will aim to challenge the pernicious culture that teaches women and girls to hate their own bodies.

Orbach's numerous publications include the classic Fat is a Feminist Issue (2006), along with other such influential texts as Hunger Strike (1993), The Impossibility of Sex (2000) and the recently published Bodies (2010), which proposes new theories on how we acquire a body.