A book with an absurd title but a serious pursuit to understand what it means to become whole
While some experiments require a laboratory, Rupert Kite conducts his in the messy, unpredictable laboratory of everyday life.
Whereas the previous volume in Kite’s Becoming Conscious memoir examined what it meant to feel alienated from the world around him, this second volume, Demagnetizing the Marmalade, turns that exploration inward. This unconventional memoir blends psychology, philosophy, and Kite’s hallmark dry humor to explore a different kind of estrangement, one between his inner and outer selves. Demagnetizing the Marmalade asks what happens when the person navigating the world feels increasingly separate from the person living inside him.
“Previously, I had, like any sensible person, allowed the Practicalities to rule my Possibilities. But since I was no longer being sensible, it seemed to me that the Practicalities would be more useful if they made my Possibilities possible.”
Following the events of Confessions of Schizoid Man, Kite leaves behind his former life in England and begins again in Greece. There, he embarks on what he calls “the Experiment,” an extended attempt to understand and reconnect with his inner self. Through psychotherapy, dreams, dance lessons, travel, increased intimacy, academic research, and eventually the construction of a home and garden, Kite gradually confronts the forces that have kept his inner and outer lives divided. Without giving away the book’s later developments, this is largely a story about moving from simply surviving the world to finding a way to participate in it without losing himself.
“Thus, I would observe my trembling subjectivity with dispassionate objectivity.”
Kite structures the memoir as a series of forty-four chapters, each documenting another stage of the Experiment. The scientific mindset that shaped his career also shapes the book itself, with experiences serving as observations, dreams acting as data, and ordinary activities becoming experiments in understanding the self. Kite’s mechanical engineering background also lends the memoir an unusual vocabulary for discussing emotional life, allowing roads, computers, mirrors, and even gardening to become metaphors for psychological change.
“I now understood the division of labour between my inner person and me.”
Kite gives his internal conflict a life of its own. His inner and outer selves function almost like two separate characters, each with its own needs and agendas, frequently pulling him in opposite directions. His outer self attempts to navigate the demands of the world, while his inner self communicates through dreams, desires, physical reactions, and unexpected impulses, often disrupting the carefully constructed life his outer self has created. This duality gives readers a visceral way of understanding anxiety, identity, sexuality, and self-protection while making Kite’s psychological journey both genuinely funny and surprisingly moving.
For example, dance lessons force Kite to move beyond observing his own behavior and into the vulnerable experience of inhabiting his body and responding to another person in the present moment. The book shows how these two parts of himself gradually learn to work together through small acts of connection: dancing with another person, planting a garden, repairing familial relationships, or simply learning to remain present.
“The greatest pleasure was to discover that thoughts born in the privacy of my head were of interest to the world outside.”
Demagnetizing the Marmalade builds meaningfully on its predecessor, shifting from alienation from the world to alienation from the self. It is a thoughtful and often relatably amusing exploration of the difficult process of becoming a person. Readers of the first volume, as well as anyone who enjoys unconventional, introspective memoirs, will be eager to continue Kite’s journey and may find themselves learning more about their own inner worlds alongside him. The book discusses religious trauma, emotional neglect, mental health struggles, sexuality, suicide, and death, which may be difficult for some readers. Yet its underlying message is hopeful: sometimes becoming more fully yourself means learning to bring those divided parts back into relationship.
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