Helping Anorexia’s Treatment through Design: an interview with Guylaine Sauvaget-Lasserre, clinician psychologist
Guylaine Sauvaget-Lasserre: In the example I’ve just given to illustrate Aurore’s practice, what is produced during the workshop is to be seen as an “object.”
In my own expressive workshops, form and esthetics do not really matter because what participants produce is but an item to strengthen the bond. To put into words my mediation activities, my motto is, “Give shape to the shapeless.” At the start of my workshops, I never propose a specific shape, but rather those mediators already-mentioned. Aurore, on the other hand, proposes this box. How can a shape emerge from this shapeless matter? I then rely on the concepts of the gestalt, a form-oriented theory. Gestalt can be seen as food for thought between psychology and design.
Jean-Patrick Péché: Would you say that these teenagers, whose relationship to food is rather delicate, have a tendency to exacerbate their perception? Are their senses altered? Do they not perceive things in a different light compared to their peers? Or, on the contrary, do they infuse their perception with new meaning?
Guylaine Sauvaget-Lasserre: Perception and representation are complex issues. To study early-development perceptions, such as food-induced pleasure, it suffices to return to the very roots of the psyche. As my experience with anorexic teenage girls is limited, it is difficult to comment on whether their perception of food is exacerbated. Anorexia is a pathology that affects, first and foremost, the image of one’s body. As I’ve said, anorexia is not only about food and the relationship one has to it. It represents an attack on the subconscious body image, which makes sense when relating back to what I explained earlier as a “…container-based pathology.” Of course, anorexic people’s perceptions are altered because the image they have of their own body is completely unfounded. These girls see themselves as fat, whereas they are not, because the ideal anorexic image leans toward a dismissal of all traces of femininity. Furthermore, all that revolves around lack of pleasure and disgust is, equally, blown out of proportion. Adolescence itself symbolizes exacerbation. Therefore, the question must be examined on a case-by-case basis. Are the young girl’s disorders to be chalked up to the whole teenage phase or, on the contrary, are they triggered by her pathology?
Jean-Patrick Péché: I imagine that this question has given rise to much discussion on the research front. This deeply-embedded pathology prevents those from attaining any type of pleasure. According to Brillat-Savarin, “Taste is the sense that gives us the greatest amount of pleasure.” Are we to deduct from this that the refusal to eat is synonymous with a refusal to achieve pleasure?
Guylaine Sauvaget-Lasserre: These individuals do feel pleasure, though different, for the notion of pleasure is a protean concept. We may encounter a slight misunderstanding due to words that convey different meanings in our respective fields of design and psychology.
For me, an anorexic is on an unquenchable pleasure quest, though not as you would interpret it. I prefer to use the word “enjoyment”, which is different from pleasure. As one can see, even in fields that appear more closely related, such as psychology and psychoanalysis, these terms conjure up very different meanings. I, therefore, don’t think anorexic people can reap any kind of pleasure from food. They can, though, find it in another form during the food-oriented workshops, such as those facilitated by Aurore, from sharing with their peers. I don’t really know how shared pleasure contributes to the design scene, but as Aurore has shown, designers must focus on groups and cliques, “being with others” and the importance of peers because sharing takes root in these kinds of circles.
"Arthur's network": applied arts workshop
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