Catherine Malabou proposes three different visions of recovery from trauma, and each one is attached to an animal: the phoenix, the spider and the salamander.
The phoenix is a vision of recovery where the wound it utterly erased. The phoenix rises from the ashes unscathed by its injuries, perfectly unblemished, precisely as it was before. Recovery means being present once again, without any scars of your former injury. Healing means making those hurt parts of yourself disappear, reconstituting them into a higher form of life.
The spider endlessly accumulates scars, which are spun into a web that’s carefully crafted to hide the original wound. The trauma is highly visible to everyone, but it’s also hidden away. If the web is cut, it only reveals more web. An attempt to sew up one gap can cause another to fray and reopen. Healing is a lucky chance. The web constantly expands, but nothing ever closes the wound. It only becomes more complex.
The salamander grows new limbs. The limbs have no scars, but they aren’t completely identical to what was there before. There’s no endless web, and there’s no higher form of life, but there isn’t a monstrous gap, either. The spider and the salamander both craft a careful response to trauma, but the salamander deprograms the wound. The injury shapes the salamander, but it’s that same injury which creates a new being, transformed just a little bit. Just a little change in shape that can change the system around it in unpredictable ways. Like the phoenix, the salamander is born in the fire, but it can’t rise above it. It stays in it, continually tested, transformed, constantly regenerating new and different parts of itself that will make the world just a bit different than it was before.
