Whereas psychoanalysis is based on the words of the psychoanalyst and the patient, on the exchange of words, Dr Kavi Vadamootoo proposes a theory based on his own experience with patients who are unable to situate themselves both physically and mentally, and who are unable to speak. Hence the use of the non-verbal medium of art as a “containing skin” to help them constitute themselves as subjects. This notion of art as “skin” in Dr Kavi Vadamootoo’s theory is acknowledged by Professor Joy Schaverien, Jungian psychoanalyst and psychotherapist, as an “innovative” concept.
This is not the only originality of his book Psychoanalysis: Becoming an Embodied Subject. Indeed, he questions the separation and primacy of the mental over the physical, of the spirit over the body. Starting with Descartes’ famous phrase: “I think, therefore I am”, following Kavi Vadamootoo, one could say: “I think, but I am not complete!” In fact, Kavi Vadamootoo is not the first to show the limits of Cartesianism. He recalls the abundant literature that exists from Spinoza to Deleuze, via Nietzsche.
Another challenge in this book is that of the “mistaken belief” that patients “live in a stable and intelligible form of embodiment”. It is perhaps this belief that explains the impasses in their traditional treatment with a general practitioner or psychiatrist, and their eventual referral to psychotherapy. Talking about four patients (Colette, Robert, Jane and Jimmy), Kavi Vadamootoo writes: “They all lived in a form of dys-embodiment with an unstable, incoherent and unintelligible form of subjectivity […] their wills for most of their lives were disorganised until they came to psychotherapy.”
Furthermore, Kavi Vadamootoo repeatedly stresses the importance of the relationship between mother and child in the cultural and social “shaping” of the body. The newborn, lost in physical and mental space, gradually emerges as an “embodied subject”.
It should also be noted that Kavi Vadamootoo constantly reminds us that “living in/as a body is not a given but an accomplishment”. It is a long process that begins at birth, when the newborn is just a mass of “flesh”. The founding act would be the touching of this flesh by the mother. We can understand why a patient like Robert, whose mother died in childbirth, remains without a body, so to speak.
It is important to note that the author is sometimes confronted with extreme cases. For example, that of John, who was born without both ears and therefore literally physically incomplete. His mother’s depression at the sight of her son’s disfigurement and the shame she feels about it worsen John’s situation and he falls into schizophrenia. And Kavi Vadamootoo shatters the myth that the psychoanalyst wears steel armour and examines the patient with coldness and indifference. On the contrary, instead of being a blank and impassive mirror, he admits that he is amazed the day John removes both of his ears, the prostheses: “I felt as if I was watching a surreal movie […] my attention became impaired […] It took me quite a while to recover my reflective stance.”
J. M. G Le Clézio said that the question you should ask yourself when writing a book is: is it really useful? Kavi Vadamootoo’s book certainly is. For the six chapters, in which he recounts his many encounters with his patients and the techniques he uses in psychotherapy, will be useful to psychotherapists working with silent clients. In addition, the reproduction of the patients’ pictorial creations provides a better understanding of the author’s stories.
This book makes Kavi Vadamootoo’s thesis accessible to any reader. All the more so as the chapters are presented in the form of stories accompanied by artistic creations and highly relevant bibliographical references. These stories sometimes cover a fairly long period of time, three or four years for some patients. And their artistic productions are all representations of the world, of others and, sometimes, of themselves.
In fact, artistic productions, such as Robert’s (Fig. 3.2, Fig. 3.4, Fig. 3.21) or John’s (Fig. 3.23), describe the patient’s condition over time and, through proper interpretation, help to guide the patient on the path to recovery. In this sense, they are liberating, as are the words spoken on the psychoanalyst’s couch. As we shall see, Kavi Vadamootoo asks the patient about his or her artistic creations and, by referring to those who have already studied the subject, draws out lessons at the end of each chapter.
If, at the end of his book, the author chooses, in all modesty, not to conclude, it is because the theory he develops is still in its infancy. I can only welcome this approach, because I like novels with an open ending that allow the reader to imagine a continuation of the characters’ lives! In the same way, I imagine the lives of Dr Kavi Vadamootoo’s patients after the art psychotherapy and anticipate the impact of his theory. He himself encourages us to do so: “We can imagine what would happen to the power of the social and cultural institutions and their discourses if the undifferentiated flesh were not empowered, at home, with a coherent and intelligible embodied will […] What world would we inherit if we were all dys-embodied beings living in bodies that are boundless and what I would call ‘un-grammared’.”
Since no one remembers his or her birth or early childhood, any theory can only be an extrapolation from careful observations of the child, especially if his or her development is “disturbed” for some reason.
The psychoanalytical nature of the book and its density obviously require precise writing, which explains the judicious choice of certain neologisms. Thus, “m(Other)” combines both “Other” and “mother”. Similarly, “diseased” (sick) becomes “dis-eased” (uneasy or unhappy). Or even “dys-embodied”, which could be translated as “without a body”…
Instead of a formal conclusion, the author had the good idea to ask Professor Nancy Harding to propose an epilogue which is a real space for debate. In order to situate the author’s theory ontologically, she calls on several philosophers, including Gilbert Simondon, Arthur Schopenhauer, Judith Butler and Karen Barad.
All in all, Psychoanalysis: Becoming an Embodied Subject, Dr Kavi Vadamootoo’s doctoral dissertation turned into a book, is an essential work that is sure to be of interest to the general public.