Her compulsive behaviors had developed over time, so he knew it would take a while to dislodge them. Levenkron was used to his patients showing resistance to treatment, so he noticed immediately her restlessness and frequent trips to the bathroom. And in the suite she found it hard to relax, standing and continually moving about in order to lose weight. After breakfast with Itchie -bacon, two eggs over easy and toast - she would visit the bathroom and ingest Dulcolax laxatives so she could purge. Levenkron’s office on East 79th Street was 19 blocks away from the Regency Hotel, but instead of conserving energy by taking a limousine Karen would power-walk up Madison Avenue, burning calories as she did so. In theory she was determined to beat her anorexia, but from the beginning she was undermining the treatment in surreptitious ways. Karen’s willingness to set aside the time and the money showed her initial level of commitment to the therapy. Then she paid Levenkron $100 for each session, which totaled $2,000 a month. Carpenter had invested a lot in this treatment - the suite was $6,000 a month before food and phone bills - but, she argued, she needed to feel comfortable. Karen Ichiuji moved into the second bedroom, as a source of support and companionship for the duration of her stay. In January 1982, Karen flew to New York and moved into a two-bedroom suite in the City Regency Hotel near Central Park, taking along 22 suitcases of matching clothes and shoes. Suspicious of Levenkron, Karen’s family thought she would have been better off being “fixed” by a Beverly Hills doctor - but that hadn’t worked for her, and she was ready to try something more radical. He would become a father figure, guiding and navigating her through the process. With his treatment, Karen would be dependent on him in order to override the authority of the disease, until she established her own separate identity. The psychotherapist had already been practicing for 12 years and was on a mission to develop effective treatment for the mystery disease.ĭescribing himself as a “nurturant-authoritative” psychotherapist, Levenkron’s approach was controversial. In his phone calls, Steven Levenkron had been firm and direct about the treatment he could offer, speaking in a no-nonsense way that reassured her. She knew instinctively that she needed someone strong to help her fight the anorexia, someone who saw through her denial and her attempts to hide the illness. Thoughts of food and the methods to eliminate it had become obsessive, dominating her day and disrupting her sleep. In this excerpt, Carpenter, having realized her disease was spiraling out of control, seeks out professional help in New York City in 1982.įormer 'Gilmore Girls' Writer Recalls Casting Search for Logan Huntzberger Role (Exclusive Excerpt)Īnorexia had become a tyrannical force in Karen’s psyche, telling her that food was an enemy to be fought. In a new biography, Lead Sister: The Story of Karen Carpenter, author Lucy O’Brien reframes Karen Carpenter’s life as that of a pioneering woman within the male-dominated recording industry and offers new insights into her tragic battle with anorexia, a mysterious eating disorder about which very little was known at the time. But time has been kind to the Carpenters, whose signature sound is now widely considered an American classic. A virtuosic drummer with a sweet, melancholic singing voice, she and brother Richard Carpenter conquered the easy-listening charts with melodically sophisticated hits like “Superstar” and “We’ve Only Just Begun.” Even President Richard Nixon was a fan and invited the Carpenters to the Oval Office in 1972 - cementing their status as the ultimate squares to the Flower Power generation. It has been 40 years since Karen Carpenter - the charismatic sister half of the multiplatinum-selling sibling act The Carpenters - died at the age of 32, and the chasm she left behind has never been filled.
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