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Gemma Corradi Fiumara, London, Routledge, 2009, £22.99 (hardback)
Gemma Fiumara is a former professor of philosophy at the Third University of Rome and a training analyst with the Italian Psychoanalytic Society. She is thus well placed to explore the notion of spontaneity – perhaps one of the most subjective of phenomena. The significance of our spontaneity is that it reflects us in our moments of being most truly ourselves. A thesis that runs through the book and stated in the last line is that ‘both as individuals and as a species we have more to gain from accepted vulnerability than from illusory power’.
This thesis perhaps captures the essence of this book that might be entitled ‘Spontaneity and its discontents’. The final chapter on self-formation and self de-creation puts forward a position saying that as we develop through our lives, we must be in a process of adapting to the exigencies of the external world but also discarding those processes and structures that may have suited us in the past but which are no longer relevant or necessary. Fiumara thus looks at the nature of the human subject and its predicament through the lens of spontaneity.
Right at the beginning, Fiumara sets out her challenge to psychoanalysts. ‘If psychoanalysis is not a humble self-questioning venture that allows itself to be constantly challenged by the enigmatic aspects of mental life – as, for instance, spontaneity – then it may well metamorphosize into a most hubristic form of thought’. The nature of ‘spontaneity’ then is a basic question of psychoanalytical research – as is the notion of subjective agency – and its challenge is that ‘the questioner must be included in the question’, in the sense that ‘the immense complexity of the inquirer cannot be excluded’.
With this daunting proviso in mind, Fiumara launches into her review of the ‘enemies’ of spontaneity. The reviewer must be careful in his language here of not falling into an unfortunate splitting in his use of the word ‘enemi