Eating Disorder Treatment in London

Eating disorder treatment in London

Eating disorders (anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, ARFID, and the range of less formally categorised difficult relationships with food and the body) are among the most complex presentations in clinical practice. They sit at the intersection of psychology and physiology, of early development and present circumstance, of private suffering and public performance. Effective treatment requires a clinician who can work across all of these dimensions, not just the most visible ones.

Philippe Jacquet & Associates offers specialist eating disorder treatment in London at Harley Street W1, Central London, and Bermondsey SE1. Philippe Jacquet holds Europe’s only doctoral research specifically on male eating disorders from an analytical psychology perspective, a specialism that reflects both the depth of his engagement with this population and the extent to which eating disorders in men remain underserved by mainstream provision.

Types of eating disorder treated

This practice works with all eating disorder presentations, including anorexia nervosa (both restrictive and atypical; bulimia nervosa; binge eating disorder; ARFID (avoidant restrictive food intake disorder); orthorexia) the preoccupation with dietary purity that is particularly common in men; and dysmorphic muscle preoccupation, also more prevalent in male presentations. Many people who seek eating disorder treatment in London are not certain whether their experience qualifies, whether it is serious enough, or whether it fits a recognisable pattern. That uncertainty is itself part of what brings people to treatment, and it is not a barrier to starting.

Eating disorders in men

Men represent approximately a quarter of people with eating disorders, but are significantly underrepresented in treatment. The reasons are well-documented: the cultural framing of eating disorders as a female problem, the way male presentations differ from the clinical pictures that dominate public awareness, and the shortage of clinicians with genuine expertise in this area. Philippe Jacquet is the only clinician in Europe to have conducted doctoral-level research specifically on male eating disorders from an analytical psychology perspective. That specialism is not incidental. It is the result of sustained clinical and academic engagement with a population that has been poorly served.

In men in particular, an eating disorder frequently sits beneath an alcohol problem, alcohol being, in effect, liquid sugar. Repeated alcohol relapse often resolves only once that underlying eating disorder is recognised and treated.

The approach to treatment

Eating disorder treatment at this practice is depth-oriented and integrative, drawing on Jungian analysis, psychodynamic frameworks, and a clinical understanding of the body as a site of meaning, not just behaviour. The work does not focus primarily on food, weight or eating behaviours. It focuses on what those behaviours are doing: what they are managing, protecting against, or expressing. Understanding that is what makes change possible at depth, rather than at the level of symptom management alone.

For presentations where trauma is implicated (which is frequently the case) EMDR is available. Philippe Jacquet is an EMDR practitioner with over 20 years of experience and uses it within the therapeutic relationship as part of a broader treatment approach rather than as a standalone protocol.

What to expect

Treatment begins with an initial consultation, a private conversation about what has brought you here, your history, and what you are looking for. There is no obligation to continue beyond it. The first session is not an assessment in a clinical or bureaucratic sense. It is a conversation between two people, in which you can speak as much or as little as feels right, and in which nothing is assumed from your presence.

Sessions are available in person at Harley Street W1, Central London, and Bermondsey SE1. Online sessions via secure video link offer the same depth of clinical work and are preferred by some clients for reasons of privacy or convenience. No GP referral or formal diagnosis is required to begin.

Confidentiality

All sessions are conducted under strict confidentiality. Nothing shared in sessions is disclosed to any third party (GP, insurer, employer or family member) without explicit written consent. The only exceptions are narrow legal obligations which are explained clearly at the outset and which almost never arise in ordinary therapeutic practice.

Eating disorder treatment across our locations

In person at Harley Street W1, Central London and Colchester, and internationally in Brussels, Paris, Monaco, Marbella, Dubai and Nairobi, with online sessions worldwide.

In Philippe’s words

When men come to see me with an eating disorder (and they do, more than people think) what strikes me first is the shame. Not the eating disorder itself, not the behaviour, but the shame of having something that they believe belongs to someone else. Something female. Something they have no right to. That shame is often the first thing that needs to be addressed, because it is the thing that has prevented them from seeking help for years, sometimes decades.

What they tell me when they arrive is usually some version of: I know it sounds strange. I know this isn’t something men get. And underneath that is the deeper thing: I feel out of control. I feel not at home in my body. I feel disgusted with myself and I do not know why. The eating disorder is the answer to something, a way of managing feelings that have no other outlet, a way of asserting control when control has been lost, a way of punishing or numbing or disappearing. Understanding what the eating disorder is doing is what makes it possible to find another way.

The work is not primarily about food. It never is. It is about what food and the body have come to carry, and why. That is what the doctoral research made clear, and what twenty-five years of clinical work has confirmed.

Eating disorders in men require a different clinical approach. Dr Philippe Jacquet holds what is, to our knowledge, Europe’s only DProf specifically on male eating disorders from an analytical psychology perspective. Read the full specialist page on male eating disorder treatment.

For specialist treatment of eating disorders in men, including doctoral-level expertise, male eating disorder specialist →

Further reading: What is an eating disorder?, a Jungian view of eating disorders and the history of the Twelve Steps and Overeaters Anonymous.

Eating disorders, addiction and trauma and EMDR therapy in London travel together far more often than they appear separately: the international evidence is set out in the statistics page. Treating one while ignoring the others rarely holds.

How often, and for how long

This is the question people ask last, having decided it is impolite to ask it first.

The honest answer is that eating disorder work is usually once, twice or three times a week, and that the frequency is a clinical decision rather than a commercial one. It depends on how much of the day the disorder currently occupies, on how alone somebody is with it, and on how much steadiness there is in the rest of their life to hold the work.

What it is not is a matter of finding the right thing to say.

There is a version of therapy people arrive expecting, in which the clinician eventually says the sentence that explains everything, and the disorder loosens its grip. I have been doing this for twenty-five years and I have never seen it. Insight is necessary and it is nowhere near sufficient. Someone can understand precisely what their bingeing is doing for them and still binge that evening.

What changes things is not a revelation. It is support, sustained long enough for something new to become possible.

The stabilisers

The image I keep returning to is a child learning to ride a bicycle.

At the start there are two stabilisers on the back wheel. With them the child is upright, and being upright is what allows the pedalling to begin at all. They push off, they wobble, they move forward. Nobody would suggest they are cycling badly because the stabilisers are on. Without them there would be no cycling to speak of.

Then, at some point, you take one off. They are less steady and they manage. Later the second one comes off, and there is a period of genuine unsteadiness, and usually a fall.

The fall is not evidence that the process failed. It is what learning to balance looks like from outside. They get up, they get back on, and they go.

Three sessions a week is two stabilisers. It is not a more intensive version of the same thing; it is enough contact that a person can stay upright while learning something they could not learn while falling constantly. And the direction of the work is always towards fewer, because the point was never the sessions.

That is also why I am straightforward about frequency reducing. Somebody who has been coming three times a week and is now coming once has not been downgraded. That is the shape of it working.

Why I usually suggest a fellowship as well

Alongside the therapy I generally suggest Overeaters Anonymous, or another twelve-step fellowship appropriate to the presentation.

Not because therapy is insufficient, and not as a substitute for it. For a practical reason that I would rather state than dress up.

Even at three sessions a week, there are a hundred and sixty-five other hours. You cannot telephone me at eleven at night when you are standing in the kitchen. In a fellowship you can telephone somebody, and that somebody has stood in the same kitchen.

Between us, the therapy does the work that requires depth and continuity, and the fellowship covers the hours that require a voice. I would rather tell you plainly what I cannot provide than pretend the gap is not there.