Richard Dadd (1 August 1817 – 7 January 1886) was an English painter of the Victorian era. Following a long tour of the Middle East in the early 1840s he succumbed to a schizophrenia-type illness, following which he murdered his father and fled to France where he attacked another traveller. After his return to England he spent over forty years in the Bethlem and Broadmoor, during which period most of the works for which he is best known were created.
Dadd’s painting The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke is featured on the cover of a recent British Journal of Psychiatry. Nicholas Tromans, a Senior Lecturer at London’s Kingston University, is widely published on the subject of 19th century art and is author of Richard Dadd: the Artist and the Asylum. He came to talk to us about Dadd’s life and mental illness:
AoP: As a young man, how did Dadd go about establishing himself as a painter in London?
NT: It seems that Richard owed a great deal to his father, who had been a high-street chemist in Kent but who, when Richard was a teenager, took over a gilding business in central London which must have had many professional artists among its clients. Dadd’s own beginnings as a professional artist were really entirely conventional. He became a student at the Royal Academy (virtually next door to his father’s shop) and made studies after the sculptures at the British Museum. He appears to have been extraordinarily self-confident, and was soon sending his pictures to exhibitions in London and in places like Birmingham and Manchester. He managed to attract the patronage of both London aristocrats and the self-made men of the industrial cities – as well as the support of some influential critics. By the time he left for his tour of the East in 1842 he was one of the risng stars of the London art scene.
AoP: What do we know about how and why he killed his father?
NT: Towards the end of his tour of the Mediterranean, in the Spring of 1843, Richard began to suffer from delusions – that there were people trying to harm him, perhaps that he could see the devil in human forms. Many of those who had known him were worried by his unusual behaviour after his return to London, and his father consulted a psychiatrist at St Luke’s – Alexander Sutherland – who recommended hospitalisation. Possibly in response to this suggestion, Richard carefully planned a knife attack on his father, which succeeded in killing him. Richard was soon afterwards arrested and eventually sent to Bethlem Hospital in Lambeth. Later Dadd explained that the killing had been required of him by the Ancient Egyptian god of the dead, Osiris, and that although Richard approved of the destruction of the imposter who claimed to be his father, he was in effect only an instrument in the hands of the deity. It was a fantastic delusion, but one in keeping with Richard’s larger set of beliefs about the continuing truth and relevance of the philosophies of ancient cultures.
AoP: What do we know about how he was as a patient?
With regard to his time at Bethlem (1844-64) – not a lot. There are really only two entries in his casenotes, and the first of these dates from as late as 1854. This entry describes how violent Dadd was considered when first admitted, and how he would suddenly strike another patient without provocation (and then immediately apologise). The formal designation of ‘dangerous’ was applied to Dadd even during the last years of his time at Bethlem. I infer from the lack of detail in the notes, however, that he was by and large not an especially troublesome patient – not one who required strategies to manage. That he painted ambitious pictures for the two senior managers of Bethlem – paintings which he worked on for years – suggests some kind of relationship between patient and staff, although certainly not an uncomplicatedly collaborative one.
AoP: Why was he transferred to Broadmoor?
Dadd was admitted to Bethlem as a Criminal Lunatic – someone too unwell to be punished for a crime, or (from the 1840s) one too unwell to stand trial at all. This meant being placed in a special wing of the hospital in very cramped, minimally furnished, high-security conditions. It was obvious to the authorities that something needed to be done with this novel legal category of prisoner/patient, and a dedicated new hospital was made possible by an Act of Parliament in the early 1860s. This was to be Broadmoor near Reading, to which Dadd was transferred along with his fellow male Criminal Lunatics, in 1864, and where he died and is buried. There were those – among them the Superintendent of Bethlem – who feared that gathering together these cases out in the countryside would produce “a bastile of lunacy”, feared and resented by the public. These critics were to be proved at least partly right, but for Dadd the change brought improvements. By any common-sense criteria of well-being, his life got better: he was able to see more, to move about more; he took an interest in cricket and chess; and the range of media in which he himself worked expanded.
AoP: How has Dadd’s legacy been regarded after his death?
Dadd’s meticulous watercolours never entirely went off the radar of the art market. Collectors were able to buy them as they left Bethlem and Broadmoor by one route or another. The V&A and the British Museum both acquired watercolours by Dadd while he was still living at Broadmoor. But after his death there were really only a series of false starts when it came to retrieving his biography and reconstructing his oeuvre. Various people had a go, but there was just too little to go on. Things changed only in the 1960s when the Fairy Feller arrived at the Tate and when Bethlem acquired a dynamic and imaginative archivist who was in a position to become Dadd’s first proper biographer. This all coincided of course with the passionate debates generated by the so-called anti-psychiatry movement, and Dadd – in the guise of heroic ‘survivor’ of the Victorian asylum – seemed suddenly of acute cultural significance. Interest in him has calmed down since. As I say in the preface to my own book on Dadd, I have not tried to resurrect him as a hero of any kind: I have tried to understand him as a wonderful artist – one of the most exciting of the Victorian age in my opinion – who happened to spend his career in unusual circumstances.
AoP: Despite his situation, Dadd’s pictures seem untouched by the content of his delusion and he never addressed asylum life in paint. Can you reflect on this?”
Well, “sane” Victorian artists rarely painted the streets on which they lived, or pictures which sought to sum up their philosophies of history. They were typically more interested in the same kinds of things on which Dadd remained fixed, that is, the topography of exotic places filtered through the memory, portraits, and illustrations to literature. Dadd had never been a Realist — on the contrary he was from the start of his career a painter of poetic imagination. And in any case, one reason for spending so much time thinking back, visually, over his time abroad in the early 1840s must surely have been a need to escape from the very limited environment in which he had to live.
AoP: And where can interested people see Dadd’s stuff?
NT: Not a lot of oil paintings in public collections (the watercolours can only be shown periodically of course because of their vulnerability to light).
The Scottish National Portrait Gallery have Dadd’s wonderful portrait of Dr. Alexander Morison:
Tate Britain Dadd collection
And just last year, the Harris Museum and Art Gallery in Preston acquired the early fairy subject Puck which had been in a Preston collection in the nineteenth century
The best place to head is however Bethlem Hospital itself where a substantial number of Dadd’s works can be seen in a context which helps make sense of them.
A small collection of Richard Dadd’s paintings is being exhibited Feb – April 2012 in the Bethlem Hospital museum – details.
Links:
Richard Dadd: The artist and the asylum on Amazon.co.uk
This clip of a Richard Dadd painting being discovered on Antiques Roadshow is worth a watch (starts at 4:24)
Tate channel: Richard Dadd the artist and the asylum
Richard Dadd: Masterpieces of the asylum Independent 2011
Richard Dadd: Madness and Beauty Telegraph 2008
Review of Artist and the asylum:
Guardian A S Byatt September 2011
Telegraph Nicholas Shakespeare July 2011
Filed under: Theatre
The Tragedy of Suicide – a perspective from Shakespeare.
by Katrina Davis
I recently saw the Royal Shakespeare Company perform “Cardenio”, which they claim is a ‘lost play’ by Shakespeare. I was struck that there were many threats of suicide, especially by the poorly treated Lucinda, who, thankfully, flees to a nunnery instead. Thus she is around for a happy ending.
Psychiatrists contend that the vast majority of attempted and completed suicides are due, in part at least, to mental illness robbing people of their happy ending. Yet in many plays, suicide seems to be a great romantic or noble gesture. I wondered if it was possible to demonstrate modern methods of thinking in mental health and crisis intervention to the problems thrown up in the tragedy plays of Shakespeare.
Romeo and Juliet
This story is not one of Shakespeare’s devising, as there were many versions of the basic story. The Chorus warns us “…Never was a story of more woe Than this of Juliet and her Romeo”. But could modern day mental health have prevented the eventual outcome of two young people ending their lives? Firstly, I would hope that herbalism of the type practised by Friar Laurence would be more strictly legislated. A potion that would bring someone so close to a death-like state, must surely be quite a dangerous one; as Juliet herself perceives, wandering if the Friar really wanted her dead. The use of such a potion would be a very dangerous cry for help, and would probably be banned or restricted, as has happened to paracetamol, where the public health approach of limiting pack size and availability is thought to have saved many lives.
Poor Juliet is let down by both her religious by the friar and personal counsel from her nurse. She is forced into a marriage for political reasons. Forced marriage is illegal in the UK, and defined as where “…one or both spouses do not (or, in the case of some vulnerable adults, cannot) consent to the marriage and duress is involved. Duress can include physical, psychological, financial, sexual and emotional pressure.” Juliet would also be subject to legal protection due to her young age as “[t]he government regards forced marriage as an abuse of human rights and a form of domestic abuse and, where it affects children and young people, child abuse.” Therefore, I would hope that Juliet could have turned to the police and that they would have passed her case to the Forced Marriage Unit at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (which helps those in the UK and abroad).
If Juliet had continued down the path of taking a dodgy sleeping potion, is there any way that Romeo could have been prevented to react the way he had to the awful sight of it? Well of course electronic communication should have meant he got the message that it was all a ruse, but if it hadn’t, I hope that he would have been supported having just been convicted by the justice system. I would hope that the probation service would have been keeping an eye on him, and would have enrolled him into a suitable Offender Behaviour Programmes. For example, their most commonly delivered programme is “Enhanced Thinking Skills”, which includes impulse control, flexible thinking, social perspective taking, values and inter-personal problem solving. For this impetuous, hot headed youth, these would all be very useful things to learn, and may have helped him take a step back from the situation in hand. However, I suspect hundreds of years on, there is still some way to go in the rehabilitation of offenders for the benefit of themselves and society.
Hamlet
From the first in Hamlet, all the other characters regard Hamlet as being mad or at the least “distracted”. But it is not a doctor that they trust can help him, but his sweetheart, Ophelia. In Act 3 Scene 1, the new King arranges a meeting between Hamlet and Ophelia as if by accident, and the queen tells Ophelia “I hope your virtues Will bring him to his wonted way again”. But when Hamlet appears and gives his speech, it is clear his is not in a mood to be comforted. He denies he has ever loved her, talks in riddles, and tells her “To a nunnery, go, and quickly too.” She is most alarmed, comparing his reasoning to “sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh”, and she feels “deject and wretched”.
If Ophelia had the opportunity to discuss this with a modern doctor and refer Hamlet for some help, he may well have been seen by an Early Intervention project. These are teams specialising in assessment and management of young people experiencing psychosis for the first time. They usually consist of psychiatrists, psychotherapists, community psychiatric nurses, social workers and occupational / vocational therapists. They are geared towards helping people developing schizophrenia, but will often take on people with psychotic depression or even complicated grief reactions such as Hamlet is likely to have been experiencing. Among the useful things they would have done would be to: support the carers, especially Ophelia; do a risk assessment that would have thrown up the easy access to daggers and swords; and put in place a structure to help Hamlet get back to University as soon as he was able – since idling around in such a morbid castle could not have been doing Hamlet much good.
While in turmoil, paranoid and disillusioned, Hamlet kills a figure he believes to be his father’s killer, but is in fact Ophelia’s father. Ophelia then becomes deranged in her grief, feigning indifference and singing bawdy songs. It is in these circumstances she drowns in a muddy brook, despite the new King having recognised the danger and asked of Horatio “Follow her close; give her good watch, I pray you.” I would hope that today, someone might have taken Ophelia to the local A&E department or walk-in clinic where she could be assessed by a psychiatric liaison nurse, perhaps referred for a short hospital admission or given support at home by the crisis team and some Valium, or perhaps just be given the opportunity to talk. In the next few days, she may also seek help from Victim Support if the murder of her father is officially reported. They allocate a caseworker to each family bereaved through homicide and tailor support to people’s differing needs, and this can extend over several years if needed. There are specific services for children, and the crime doesn’t need to be reported for children to call the supportline and speak to someone in confidence about the aftermath of a crime.
Macbeth
The attitudes of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth to begin with over the killing of Duncan seem to clearly different, with his mental torment contrasting with her savage imagery. He feels his hand will never be clean; she that a little water will clear them of the deed. She sees “The sleeping and the dead Are but as pictures”, where he sees only unnaturalness in killing. He fears the unknown, while she does not question their future success. But then the nightmares start. They are both afflicted after a curse Macbeth received from the dark after killing Duncan in Act 2 Scene 2: “Glamis hath murder’d sleep, and therefore Cawdor Shall sleep no more; Macbeth shall sleep no more.”
While sleep deprivation appears to put Lady Macbeth on edge, it seems to numb Macbeth, who becomes inoculated against terror so much he declares “I am in blood Stepped so far that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er.” Lady Macbeth continues her disintegration with sleepwalking and muttering of unnatural events and apparitions. She ends her life shortly after. Her husband is so numb as to make when of the bleakest statements in Shakespeare in Act 5 Scene 5: “She should have died hereafter; There would have been a time for such a word”. It is a sentiment that seems all too true when thinking about someone’s suicide – they died too early.
One organisation set up to prevent the loss of life, and also indirectly the grief of others, from suicide is the Samaritans. The Samaritans is a charity based in the United Kingdom that was started from a single phone in 1953 and in 2009 made over 5 million contacts with people by telephone, email, SMS, minicom, Typetalk, letter or face to face. The phone lines are open seven days a week, 24 hours a day, as they know that people can find night can a very unsettling time, as did Lady Macbeth. According to 2009 figures, most people are distressed when they called the Samaritans, 19% of people were suicidal, and 0.6% had already endangered their life when they called. The Samaritans strategy is to take a lead reducing suicide by engaging individuals and groups at risk of suicide, offering effective and acceptable responses which reduce their level of risk. One of these groups is offenders such as Lady Macbeth, as suicide is seven times more common among the prison population. They train prisoners to be ‘listeners’: a confidential, non-judgemental presence that can support those experiencing distress and despair.
King Lear
This play, set in Ancient Britain, owes much to the tradition of Greek drama. It is both a domestic drama on the nature of the relationship between fathers and children, and a public drama, dealing as it does with a King and the succession.
The Tragedy of King Lear actually has an averted suicide in Act 4 Scene 6. The Earl of Gloucester has been loyal to the King, but is horribly tortured for this. He is tied down, treated like a thief, yanked by his beard, and then his eyes are gouged out. When he is finally allowed to go to Dover, it is in order to go to the highest cliff and “repair the misery”. He shows hopelessness and helplessness, proclaiming “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport” (4.1.37–38). But his guide to Dover is his own son, disguised, and he tricks him into thinking he is at the top of a cliff when he is actually on the flat. Thus when he survives the leap, his son is able to tell him it was a miracle he was saved. He even goes so far as to say that he had seen the devil with Gloucester before he leapt. Here, he is externalising the suicidal urge and it works very well. Gloucester says he now will “bear Affliction” more patiently and speaks of the “fiend” that brought him to the cliff. Sometimes people more unfamiliar with mental health can feel it is futile to save someone when they have determined to kill themselves, but this is not the case, and follow-up studies of those who have attempted suicide and failed show that the vast majority do not try again in the following years (for example, Tidemalm et al. Risk of suicide after suicide attempt according to coexisting psychiatric disorder BMJ 2008). The most important thing to be done for these people is help for any major mental illness and support, be it psychotherapy or generic. In order to do this, it is essential to ask people who have “accidents” or harm themselves about depression and suicidal urges so that they can get the support they need.
The one person who actually does kill themselves in this play, the King’s daughter Goneril, is such a foul character that it is hard to have sympathy enough to wish to save her. But in fact, she is only ever exploiting the situation that comes around through her father’s “madness”, which is the real villain of the piece. Whether Lear is mad or vain, and if mad, whether it is dementia (“the infirmity of his age” as Regan would put it), I won’t try to determine: there has definitely been a change. Regan, Goneril and Kent all express surprise as his treatment of Cordelia as he cuts her off, and they all blame this on his current state of mind. Inheritance can be an issue for families today. Often, a member of the family will take over managing the affairs of one who is not capable of the judgement needed to do so themselves. But the instruction for this must be made when they were still capable of nominating such a person. What happens if, as in this case, it is not until the decisions are made (or fail to be made) that it is clear that someone’s judgement was clouded? And if even when told, they lacked the insight to know they were doing the wrong thing? We would class these people as “vulnerable adults” in that they need help and protection from the law and statutory authorities.
The Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA) clarified the law around people who lacked the capacity to make decisions. Someone is lacking in capacity if they cannot do any one of: understand the nature of the decision; retain the information for long enough to make a decision; weigh and balance the information to make a decision; or communicate the decision. The Earl of Kent shows himself to be Lear’s most loyal advisor. If he felt that the Lear lacked capacity, he could have referred his estate to the Court of Protection, which is a body set up by the MCA. The court can make decisions or appoint someone to make decisions in the categories of ‘property and affairs’ and ‘healthcare and personal welfare’. It can be a little complicated – there are up to ten long forms to fill out to make a referral. One way to get assistance with his is through a “memory clinic”. This is a community mental health team formed exclusively to assess, advise and manage people with suspected dementia. With Lear, I would hope the first thing to be done would be to rule out an acute medical illness causing a fluctuating confusion (i.e. delirium).
Conclusions
We have seen that there are a number of deaths in Shakespeare tragedies our society might view as preventable. Public health measures against suicide and poisoning may have helped Juliet, and her Romeo might have been helped by offender rehabilitation. Treatment for mental health or emotional problems might have helped Hamlet and Lady Macbeth. An integrated approach to assessing and managing cognitive decline may have helped King Lear and his family. Better support for victims of crime and carers of people with mental health problems may have helped Hamlet’s Ophelia, and many of the other characters in Shakespeare’s tragedies. These priorities, of reducing means of suicide and supporting those most at risk – those at the margins of society, with mental illnesses, offenders and victims of crime, the young and impulsive, the old and in pain – still ring true today. That is one of the attractions of Shakespeare plays. But we must beware of romanticising suicide as Shakespeare can do, and instead think of every one as an avoidable tragedy.
And so to philosophy… We dived in headfirst and found the waters, well, rather murky. Consciousness Explained is Daniel Dennett’s 1991 book on the most difficult conundrum facing philosophy and science today – the phenomenon of consciousness.
As a group, we started by thinking a bit about this. How would you study it? How would you define it? Hang on, what actually is it? The more we thought about it, the more difficult it seemed. Thankfully, despite our guest expert falling ill on the day of the event, we had a great turn out to make (ahem) light work of this weighty topic.
Consciousness Explained is divided into three parts. Dennett uses the first section to outline his project, method and goals. Here he introduces ‘heterophenomenology’, his ‘neutral’ method aimed at getting clear on what the phenomena that need to be explained actually are. The second part develops his model of consciousness, the ‘Multiple Drafts Model’, which he contrasts with the ‘Cartesian Theatre’ which it is so hard to think oneself out of. This is presented as an empirical theory, drawing on evidence from evolutionary theory as well as Artificial Intelligence, neuroscience and cognitive psychology. The third and final part focuses on the philosophical challenges that consciousness poses in the form of some entertaining thought experiments.
Dennett aims to ‘break the spell’ of our way of thinking about consciousness which makes consciousness seem unexplainable. He does this by providing an alternative way of thinking – an alternative set of metaphors. Few people would claim to be Cartesian dualists – to believe that the mind is made of a completely different kind of stuff than the body – yet we seem to fall into the trap of imagining consciousness as something that is played out in the brain for another observer in the brain: as if the light waves that impinge on our retinas are transduced into neural signals only to be transduced again for our real selves to ‘see’. This manifests as much in scientific as lay thinking about consciousness. His alternative metaphor is the ‘Multiple Draft’: the self exists rather as a scientific paper exists – circulating in multiple drafts – with no final, authoritative version.
Discussion focused on the book and its wider implications e.g. the mind/brain divide, the implications of materialism, is consciousness an epiphenomenon? (we thought not), is there a social definition of consciousness as opposed to individual? (we got stuck on that one!), whether Dennett believes in free will or not? (yes he does). Artificial intelligence and Turing’s famous Test came up, – a machine indistinguishable from a human being. Could a robot have a mind? What about philosophical zombies? Zombies are similar to us in appearances and behaviour but, supposedly, lack subjective conscious experience. Sadly, the zombie discussion didn’t go very far as the group were sceptical (probably rightly) about the contribution that fantasy zombies could make. It did, however, lead us to the one of the key difficulties: qualia. Qualia are the subjective ‘feel of things’, what it’s like to feel pain, to smell fresh coffee. Labelled elsewhere as ‘the hard problem of consciousness’, how can these be explained? Dennett attempts to show how the whole way of thinking in these terms is a ‘mess’, ‘best walked away from’.
Philosophy often uses thought experiments (such as zombies) to help with complex problems like this. So we thought we’d give that a go with Frank Jackson’s famous thought experiment Mary’s room. Mary is a sci-fi colour expert in the future kept in a black and white room for her whole life. Mary has never seen colour although is world expert on colour red (she knows everything! Refraction, chemical components, wave-length, subjective reports from others). One day she is released, she steps outside and sees a red-rose. Does she learn something new about the colour red? Intuitively, you might think yes. Not our group, hardcore materialist Maudsley Trainees that they are! A straw poll saw ‘no’ as the majority – albeit a narrow majority – view. They were quite happy to do away with qualia but still felt that Dennett hadn’t fully convinced them with his theory.
Well-written, witty, direct and peppered with useful footnotes and anecdotes, Explaining Consciousness was, nonetheless, an ambitious and challenging book and choice for our group. The grand project of the book and the value of philosophy in shaping ideas and questions for modern scientific exploration of consciousness were widely remarked on. The study of subjective conscious experience and the ideas of what the mind may be seemed so relevant to our practice that we wondered why the MRCPsych Course hadn’t touched upon it. Consciousness is an area the book group will return to.
The next meeting of Reading the Mind will be on Tuesday 20th September at 6pm in Seminar Room 2, Institute of Psychiatry. We will be reading Opening Skinner’s Box by Lauren Slater – an interesting run through ten of the 20th century’s most relevant psychological experiments. See you there!
Dr Lisa Conlan, ST6 Psychiatry Trainee and Simon Harrison, ST4 Psychiatry Trainee
Filed under: Art
Dr Sarvenaz Keyhani has kindly allowed this site to display more of her artwork.
The three fates is oil on canvas size approximately 60 by 90 cm. It is based on the Greek myth of three goddess of fate: One weaves the thread of human life, the second measures it, and the third cuts it when someone dies. The Greeks believed even the gods couldn’t run away the fates and their destiny.
Sitting woman is a life drawing using white chalk on black paper. It was drawn at a class at the London school of painting and drawing
This is one of the artist’s favourite paintings, Age of innocence and was painted after watching a movie 1-2 years ago. It’s chalk pastel on black paper and the colours limited to blue and light purple. This is one of the series of blue paintings.
The sleeping girl with a doll is a charcoal on paper drawing from 2000, when the artist was doing pre-internship in paediatrics in Tehran.
Filed under: Art
Dr Sarvenaz Keyhani is a psychiatrist working in general adult psychiatry in London. As well as a psychiatrist she is an artist and has been featured in the British Journal of Psychiatry.
Dr Keyhani has kindly allowed this blog to publish some of her works with her own captions. If you click on a picture this will take you to an enlarged image.
“Before the meeting was published in British Journal of Psychiatry in April 2011, and is a scene from a psychiatry meeting I attended during my training in Wessex deanery and is chalk pastel on coloured paper.”
“Melancholia is done in oil, black and white with the only dark purple in small areas of the painting. I did this painting in 2004-2005, 60 in 80 cm; the figure has cornered herself in the painting, wrapped in her own world as most of the depressed people would do. I didn’t have model for this painting.”
“Silent cry was done in 2001, 60 cm in 90 cm; it took few months to finish the painting. It’s in oil paint, showing a scene of disaster, figures shouting and screaming but no one can hear them. Goya is one of my favourite painters and I love his paintings especially ‘The 3th of May’ showing execution of Spanish rebels by the French army and how timeless that painting is. Similary, I have omitted the clothing for my people in this painting, so they can belong to any time and any disaster showing the horrors of wars.”
“Theseus and the Amazons is based on Greek mythology of a series of drawings I did on Greek Myths, all white chalk on black paper. I feel this gives more intensity than traditional black coal on white paper. The scene is taken from story of Theseus when he meets Antiope, the Queen of the Amazons; he has come to woo her, however other Amazons are suspicious of him and warning Antiope who doesn’t seem to listen.”
“View of Amsterdam is a drawing with black ink, from when I went to Amsterdam in 2004. I was very impressed with the canals there, and people riding bicycles. Drawing is a separate art to painting, and no longer considered a preliminary sketch for a painting, as one can always put a lot of spontaniety in a drawing with quick lines and impressions.”
Filed under: Film
Here One Day trailer from Kathy Leichter on Vimeo.
Kathy Leichter is a documentary film producer and director. Kathy is currently in production on HERE ONE DAY, a documentary which follows Kathy’s quest to understand how living with her mother’s mental illness and losing her to suicide have impacted her and her family. The film is unfinished and Kathy is fundraising.
Here she tells us about the project. The trailer is above.
Can you tell us about the film you are making?
HERE ONE DAY is a jaw-droppingly beautiful, emotionally gripping documentary that explores the effect of my mother’s bipolar disorder and suicide on my family. The film is an intergenerational tale of discovery, an adult daughter’s coming of age story, and an exploration of how mother-loss reverberates across generations. It is also a joyous celebration of life, love, and the powerful connection between mother and child. The film documents my journey to let go of my mother after living many years with her mental illness and eventual suicide in 1995. The film also looks at mother-loss across generations in my family and my experience now as a new mother parenting my children with this legacy.
How much is this a film about a family tragedy and how much does it also seek to explore the experience of bipolar suffers today?
My mother was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1974. What followed was a long, sometimes successful, sometimes nightmarish, struggle with various medications and a gradual, reoccurring slide from mania into depression which we describe in the film. Her experience of the illness and its effect on others is vividly portrayed. But, while HERE ONE DAY is about mental illness and suicide, all too common experiences that remain alarmingly taboo and dreadfully need more public discussion, it is also about the universal experiences we all have of holding onto and letting go of people we love, the ever-changing parent/child relationship, and how our emotional experiences, not just our biology, get passed down from one generation to the next.
How difficult has it been for you to make a film on such a personal subject?
I never thought I would ever make a personal documentary before I started this film. But then, when thinking in 2004 about my next project, I looked deep inside and knew that it was my own story that I had to tell before I could help anyone else tell theirs. There are a lot of emotional challenges that one experiences making a film like this, but I have grown from each one and learned a tremendous amount. So, the film has been a real journey of healing for me that might have happened another way but I think it happened faster and perhaps more deeply because the work is so personal. The personal subject matter also brought me closer to my family and gave us a reason to talk about this very painful, but also important experience in our lives and also a chance to look back and remember and celebrate my mother too.
You say that the film follows your family that they ‘attempt to make sense of what happened and go on with their lives’ – what ways did your family find to cope?
We all coped in different ways—some of us by sitting right in the middle of the grief and swimming around in it and some of us staying as far away from it as possible. I think everyone deals with these things in their own way and on their own time. I would like to say that we were very together around this loss, but it was a mixture. Sometimes it felt like we were dealing with it on our own like separate islands and other times it felt like a journey we were all on together. We are still coping, although it is much easier now and there is more space for joy and delight in all things.
Your mother was diagnosed as bipolar in 1974, and you are making the film nearly forty years later. Have you used a lot of cine footage?
We are using a lot of super 8 home movie footage from my family, which happens to be in great shape. It’s a terrific element and really helps Nina to come alive.
How do you see this film helping other families who are in a similar situation of that of your own?
The film has moved many to write in and share their stories, personal experiences, questions, and resources. We are already creating a vital on-line community of support and we hope to continue this once the film is finished. Ending the silence is a crucial part of mitigating the isolation many families feel. We want to show people that it is ok and even good to tell our stories. We want to shatter taboos and reduce stigma. No one should have to feel the range of feelings one feels alone. We need to talk more openly about our experiences to help raise awareness about these issues, change public perception of the mentally ill, help others to get help and bring more funding to research and other public resources.
Your film is not finished but there’s a fund raising campaign. Has it been hard to raise money for a subject such as this?
Fundraising for anything in this economy is challenging and especially for independent film. But, I believe deeply in independent media and the work we are doing so the hard work is worth it. In fact, we have been extremely successful raising funds since the film’s inception–our supporters come from all over the world! To date, there are over 300 Here One Day contributors and they are a fantastic group of people! Our fundraising has been very personal and intimate and the people who have donated really care about the themes of the film and others in the community of backers.
Though time consuming, the fundraising has connected me with wonderful people—some I knew well and some I met for the first time during this process.
Why is the June 1st deadline so important?
We have until the morning of June 1st to raise $25,000 on Kickstarter.com.
Please check out our campaign and consider making a pledge
Every dollar helps to keep us in the edit room in order to finish the film. Pledges are tiered with each tier offering beautiful keepsakes and rewards depending on your donation level. If Here One Day doesn’t reach its $25,000 goal in 30 days, nobody pays and we don’t get the funds. We are under the gun to have the film completed in time for a premier screening at the American Psychiatric Association’s 63rd Institute on Psychiatric Services in San Francisco this October. The Institute will be attended by over 1,500 mental health professionals from around the globe.
It’s a perfect venue for the film.
Are there any other films or books on the subject of this film that you would recommend to the readers of this blog?
My friend, Dempsey Rice, made a great film called Daughter of Suicide. I also liked Doug Block’s 51 Birch Street which has nothing to do with suicide, but is a great personal documentary. No Time to Say Goodbye is a great book by Carla Fine as is Touched By Suicide which she wrote with Michael Myers. I also liked Hurry Down Sunshine by Michael Greenberg about his daughter’s mental illness and Living a Year of Kaddish by Ari Goldman about grieving the loss of his father. I also liked In Her Wake, by Nancy Rappaport, There are many more books and films that I could mention but these are some of the ones that first come to mind.
Aidan Moesby’s exhibition ‘Do you think we can talk about this?’ has recently opened in Newcastle’s Centre for Life. Aidan has kindly agreed to a text interview with the AoP blog, which is apt. See previous post for more details about the exhibition
What is a text based artist?
To my mind, in the most simplistic terms and almost self defining, a text based artist is one who concentrates on creating art using words rather than other traditional materials and methods. I use linguistic rather than visual imagery. It is very often conceptual in nature – with the inherent idea being paramount rather than its execution. Text based art became more prevalent in the 60’s since when it has become much more of a genre in itself.
In my practice however, I do not only use words. I use printing, installation, new and mixed media. At some stage other people are also often involved either directly or indirectly; for example if I am making work about a building I may collect people’s stories who visit or work/worked there. This impacts on my choice of materials and how I execute my work. Some of my text pieces do not contain text as such and are merely allusions or metaphor.
What drew you to concentrate on this avenue of artistic expression?
I had been working therapeutically with severely traumatised adolescents and young children. The importance of the word – how everyone has their own individualised or personalised language, imagery, metaphor – was obvious and powerful, and this extends beyond the white room or ‘walled garden’ or wherever the intervention occurred. I am passionate about ‘the word’, language and communication. I had become more interested in art than therapy having completed an MA in Art and Psychotherapy. It seemed a natural transition to use text in my art – particularly as I have no ‘traditional’ art skills and have not been to Art School.
Ten years ago I was living in Bristol and regularly taking part in poetry slams. This lead on to a residency as a poet in a school – something I had never done or even considered – but I really enjoyed it. This lead on to other writer-in-residence opportunities and that in turn lead onto becoming more ‘art’ focussed than writing. Sometimes I find writing too limiting, too precious.
What are your motifs? Do you often address themes of mental health?
My work has everything and nothing to do with mental health. What I tend to address is relationships, identity and memory. My work explores visual and linguistic imagery that we use to create and make sense of the worlds we create and inhabit. Firstly there is the relationship to ourselves, others and the world around us. We need to understand our place in the world. Our relationships are often characterised by conflict – intra-psychic, intra and inter – personal etc. As we progress in life we carry with us our psychological heritage – our ‘baggage’. So I guess the motifs are those pertinent to the human condition. For example the piece ‘Unburnt Ashes’ – which shows a face and the words ‘I’m the ashes remembering what it was to be unburnt’ – this could equally apply to me trying to piece myself together after my diagnosis or equally to the aftermath of a failed relationship where I or ‘one’ is trying to remember how they were before entering into the relationship and being hurt or losing themselves. My work with mirrors is a definite nod to my therapeutic training although I no longer work as a therapist.
My disorder is a part of me as is my art and my need to create. I cannot turn my mental disorder off and on and therefore as I live in the world and respond to it then my work addresses mental health – in the generic and specific senses. However my work is not always issue lead but it does attempt to be emotionally engaging. I like to think that within some of the work there is humour.
Ultimately the work has a displacement, it acknowledges that we are in a state of constant flux and inhabit the often subtle, fragile and dynamic boundary between the conflicted continuum of ‘ease’ and ‘dis-ease’.
How do you hope that your work will get a conversation going about the stereotypical images of those with mental health difficulties?
Like I say, my work attempts to be emotionally engaging, It is not pretty, you wouldn’t choose it to match your curtains. However, nor can you see it and not somehow get an itch from it – not necessarily immediately, more one of those that creeps up on you and yet somehow you can’t quite reach it.
I hope that by being in the Centre for Life initially, a totally different audience will get to see it. The audience there is not an ‘art crowd’ or a ‘mental health crowd’, but the general public. I feel by bringing the mental health discussion in the open in a relatively subtle way, it becomes more accessible and normalises mental health issues – there’s the desert, there’s the genetics, there’s the planets, there’s mental health – because everyone has mental health – we’re all somewhere on the ‘good bad’ continuum. In the Centre for Life people are generally in an open inquisitive explorative frame of mind. Hopefully stumbling upon my exhibition will initiate a conversation in the same vein.
The work on show is not ‘in yer face’, some are quiet and contemplative and some are gently challenging. If people can see that they do have mental health and that mental health issues or difficulties can affect anyone then maybe that can engender a change, a reflection. The fact that the exhibition is public, not hidden and there on merit, not out of tokenism are all positive and challenging elements. It can be a struggle, it’s not all rock and roll but people with mental health difficulties can lead fulfilling rich and varied lives.
Mental health diagnoses are given to individuals, but your work references both the personal and the cultural. How do you view mental disorders?
I am interested in culture and I am interested in mental health. I think the cultural language around mental health is pejorative. It is the last bastion of the ‘open season’ given that, and thank goodness, the cultural landscape around racism, sexism, homophobia etc have been addressed somewhat. For a start people with mental health diagnosis tend to adopt them and take them on. Yes, there can be something comforting about a label but people don’t say ‘I am renal failure’, ‘I am heart disease’, in the same way people say ‘I am Bipolar’, ‘I am Psychotic’. Psychiatric diagnosis subsumes the individual, the personal identity gets lost. Also, a personal bug bear is ‘T4′ (weekend morning teen-aimed slot on Channel 4). T4 was also codename for ‘Tiergarten 4′ in Berlin which during the second world was an organisation created for the euthanizing of adults with mental health problems and physical disabilities. Can you think of any other cohort of people where missing such an obvious cultural reference would be tolerated? This can only be because mental health problems are so low on our agenda.
As I have said earlier we are at once fascinated by the kooky and weird and then vilify them just as easy when we tire of them. This is not a consistent message for society regarding mental health. And we need look no further than the sensational headlines in the red tops. We have double standards – How many people get drunk and are violent regularly on a weekend compared to those with diagnosed mental health issues? We have very few positive role models or representations in culture of people with mental health difficulties – be that books, movies, music or art.
What’s your view on the relationship between art and ‘madness’?
I know this is everyone’s pet subject but I just don’t subscribe to it. I am not denying certain links between madness and creativity but what about those who are ‘mad’ and NOT creative – doubly dammed? Is it just the case that we are creative in times of unrest, struggle, extremes – falling in and out of love –and uncreative when everything is just dandy? Is it more to do with us ‘feeling’ intensely alive and in the world and having something to say about it? Then there are those who are creative and relatively sane and rational – whoever they are!
Do you have a view on the effect that psychiatric medication has on creativity?
All I can comment here is my personal experience. When I first got diagnosed and began to be medicated I cannot say whether it was the medication or extreme trauma or unwellness that rendered me uncreative. However in the attempts to stabilise me and the upward curve of dosage I generally began to feel detached from the world. Eventually I stabilised and I was looking into the world through the thousand yard stare. I was awake but not experiencing the world in any meaningful manner. I said to my psychiatrist that in order to create I needed to feel and this would aid recovery – self esteem, engaging with the world etc. As the medication reduced I began to experience the world, engage with it and respond to it – I could feel and create. To me therefore there is a direct correlation between medication and creativity. What I cannot also comment on is would I have been more or less creative now – unmedicated – cycling through the very creative manias I experienced previously but not so able to manage the day to day.
You say in your statement that we all yearn for ‘quick fixes’ and have lost our sense of self and integrity. Can you unpack this a bit?
I am only at the beginning of a discourse on this. It centres around the digital and throwaway culture. The ‘now’ and the ‘me’ culture. We appear to be obsessed, not with having a skill or being good at something but with being famous. We desire fame as an entity in itself via a plethora of vacuous talent shows and people who want to be WAGs for what it brings, not for love of another. There are the cathartic 15 minutes of fame – I produced a piece ‘Have you been affected by this issue?’ for the 40th anniversary exhibition of the Disability Act (ODI-Parliament) – the morally redundant confessionals. We all want to be something or someone else.
Despite digital ‘connectedness’ I feel we have never been more disconnected. I go to the theatre and there are people on smart phones facebooking or tweeting – yet they are in a real world event with real people and real friends; people don’t seem to be able to dissociate from the screen. We conduct our relationships differently now, how we communicate mediates the meaning of what is ‘said’ – text, tweet, phone call, letter. People forget that putting things on the net is visible to others and not just their ‘friends’.
It seems we all want to be on easy street, why exercise when surgery will do it overnight? We want others to do it for us, we live vicariously through ‘Lifestyle’ magazines – self help is so last century. As far as mental health goes I think there is definitely a ‘it’s your problem not mine’ , ‘let’s not talk about it for fear I catch it’ or ‘I don’t/won’t acknowledge I have issues around mental health’. This reinforces stereotyping and stigma – but it’s everyone’s issue. Overall I think we haven’t come to terms with the advances in technology, the changing roles for people, the changes in communication. We have lost the true sense of community and connectedness and have not truly adapted to post-Thatcher society.
Which other artists would you recommend to readers of this blog?
Fiona Banner was an early influence on my work. Felix Gonzales Torres, Susan Hiller, Jaume Plensa, Roni Horn, Claire Fontaine, Bruce Nauman, Sophie Calle, Jenny Holzer, Barbera Kruger. So many, though I tend not to go for one artist – I like individual pieces for example Hayley Newmans’ Kuss Prufung (Kiss Exam) 1999 and I prefer work which isn’t just projection or polemic because that smacks of ‘quick fix’ and I prefer more depth and substance. However, everything has its time and place.
Aidan’s blogs
http://textartist.blogspot.com/
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“Flight Fantastic” by Lorraine Nicholson
Emerging from the darkenened caverns of the mind
To embrace a light so directional and bright.
A chrysalis once, a butterfly now,
Wings unfolded, taking flight.
A flight not of escape but of liberation.
Brave New World.
What a day, what a night, what a life!
Experiencing a spiritual rebirth,
Breathing a passionate air into my lungs once again,
Like a stiff, bracing breeze energizing the soul.
Life is in my eyes once again.
The window on the soul expresses the happiness within.
A childish enthusiasm fills all my days now.
Reawakened, impassioned and wide-eyed as I go out into the world once more.
The freedom of flight is mine now
To land at will wherever fancy takes me
To touch the lives of fellow creative souls
And deliver the message of beauty
In this oft dark world in which we live.
The flight of the butterfly is one to relish.
Spread your gossamer wings and fly….
Lorraine Nicholson is the author of “The Journey Home” a collection of poetry, artwork & photography which tackles the theme of recovery from severe depression. Lorraine has kindly agreed to be interviewed by AoP blog. Her website is http://www.hope4recovery.co.uk
Can you tell us how you came to produce this book?
Like recovery it has evolved and taken shape over a period of 5 years. Back in 2006 the seed of the idea of publishing was sown during a 6 week solo exhibition I was offered showing my photography and emerging poetry which I called “A Carnival of Colour”. I used the opportunity to challenge the stigma which surrounds mental illness by going to the local press and having information up about the background to the exhibition being the visual expression of recovery from severe depression. It opened floodgates for people with similar experiences to open up to me in the gallery which was an eye-opener for me as I realised how common it is.
Subsequently in early 2007 I sent my work to several publishing houses without success. Ironically it was through a 2 month relapse in hospital in 2008 that I began to read recovery poems to fellow patients by way of peer support. One of the patients was somebody whose father was in the printing trade and on discharge we met up and he offered to put the money up to have it printed and published. It was a dream come true to share in order to help others.
How does this book fit into your story?
The first two years of my illness 2002-4 when I was in denial and giving services the runaround I got to the stage that all I did was walk long distances and then when my weight dropped to 5 stones and I was in bed all the time the last thing on my mind was creative expression. There was emptiness, desolation within and numbness, no feelings, no response to anything around me be it music, art, people. All I craved in illness was isolation and darkness.
On discharge from hospital the second time in 2005 words started coming to me thick and fast, expressing strong emotions firstly of regaining my joy in seeing colour, experiencing light and feeling alive within. My first poem had the title “Flight Fantastic” and takes the metaphor of a butterfly emerging from its cocoon and taking flight. My prolific writings helped me to make sense out of the trauma and allowed me to reframe experiences. Over the course of 3 years I was slowly able to return to the extreme pain and vulnerability and express illness in a powerful way which often shocked me to the core.
In short this book is my story.
You talk of your depressive illness giving you a second chance – can you tell us more about this?
Depressive illness as a second chance.
Severe depression for me represented something majorly wrong with and in my life which needed addressing and changing.
It was a time to ask myself the big questions in life around who am I and why am I here? Depression was the stop sign that forced me to search for and discover these answers for myself so I could move on and stay well. I realised over the course of time that I had up to that point been living life for everyone else but me.
I see, in retrospect, that illness such as this was, for me personally, an opportunity to reassess and find balance and fulfilment, so that what initially felt like a curse, being in prison for a crime I did not commit, became, in the fullness of time, the greatest blessing of my life.
There are many references to the theme of rebirth in my book. One poem, in fact, is called RENAISSANCE woman. The identity I had suppressed for years yearning to be an artist, was surfacing in a very emotive way. It could no longer be kept underground. It was gasping for air and a chance to flourish.
Now that my needs are being addressed by going to art school as a mature student, I am managing to stay well.
You’re now at art school. Where you an artist before your depression?
Since the age I could hold a pencil and before I was always keen to express things visually, having a strong visual response to the world around me.
It was something within me right from birth. Pre school age I would sit and draw everything in the room on the back of a napkin at a coffee morning with my mother. It was my main source of fulfilment and it continued right through to my teens with painting, drawing, making things out of wood/metal and then at 15 I was handed my Dad’s old analogue camera and began to photograph the world around me.
Then the academic world got in the way and art was regarded as a “nice hobby” but ” get a proper job” by the school. I had the academic ability to go to university and there studied modern languages but still took History of Fine Art as an outside subject.However, the writing was on the wall and after 3 years of success academically I failed to get my Honours degree in my final year dropping out at Christmas two consecutive years with stress and depression.
Yes I was very much the essential artist before suffering major depression at 40.
You said that you would never have thought of writing poetry before your depression – why do you think that you were inspired towards poetry as part of your recovery?
I didn’t feel as much inspired to write poetry, which, incidentally I never felt drawn to before I became ill, rather compelled to write poetry. It was a need not a choice and proved very cathartic . I didn’t choose it. It chose me and I have heard poetry described as the language of suffering. Words bagan to surface after the catatonic state of severe depression, like lava from a dormant volcano.
After long periods of non-communication and self isolation words put me in touch with the sense of self that had been absent for years. I began to feel emotion again after the numbness of depression.Floodgates opened and I could express and attempt to make sense of the trauma I had been through. It was a huge release.
Do you still write?
I no longer write poetry which, to me, demonstrates its need at that time in my life which is no longer a need. My main channel now is art and photography.
Which artists/poets do you find inspirational?
Of course there are many artists and poets who have suffered depression in their lives or major adversity like Van Gogh, Munch and Frida Kahlo. For colour alone Matisse is my favourite and in 2009 I was in the tiny chapel at Vence he designed the interior of. The vibrant colours of blue and yellow streaming through the stained glass windows onto the marble altar suddenly had me in floods of tears but of joy not anguish as I was unable in the depths of depression to feel colour or have any emotional response to what i take pleasure in normally.
As far as poetry goes I love the work of Robert Frost.What he writes speaks to me. As far as contemporary poets go, Kenneth Steven’s work evokes a visceral response in me.
You identify depression as being connected to identity loss – can you explain? Do you see this book as part of regaining that identity?
Many of my poems are related to this theme. “Labelled Lost and Found” being one of them. As much as a loss of identity in more focused terms it is related to a loss of soul for me.
I have emerged with far greater self awareness than ever before.
I now know who I am and what I am here to do.
For all my adult life I had suppressed my truth, my authenticity to “get the proper job” and to please others all at the expense of my soul’s truth. The art was an aside, an evening class here and there, a hobby, no more. I was bored, empty, hugely unfulfilled. Life was an existence.
Recovery for me has been a search, a seeking out of truths, a going deeper to explore, a PHD in self-awareness. A clarity is there which was a haze before.
My Book “The Journey Home” is an affirmation of my artistic identity. It is my unique signature on the world’s surface.
At the back of your book you thank the professionals who helped you recover – what did you find the most helpful?
The therapeutic relationship has been of huge significance to me wherein an approach is taken which is totally driven by the belief that recovery is possible.
Asking me to take the lead once I have been deemed ready to has been the very root. They have handed me back the responsibility for the future direction of my own life and invested in the development of my strengths, empowering me to be all I can be through active listening to my needs and goals.
They have allowed me to take positive risks which is the very kernel of personal growth and self-determination.
They have shown complete faith in my abilities.
Such consistency of support and encouragement to move forward in my life and go beyond the person I was before, has had an enormous impact on my self belief. The foundation of their approach is humanitarian-driven and stems from a genuine desire to care holistically and promote self determination, ultimately aiming to make themselves redundant in my care.
The recovery approach for me consists of a “way of being” with people at every stage from crisis through every ongoing step. It is an intuitive “felt” response to the way you are feeling at any given time. “Tuning in” to the person’s wavelength shows wisdom based on understanding what is needed at the time. The tone of voice, body language, choice of words, hopeful attitude makes all the difference to our outlook. Being surrounded by people who feel positive about you and believe in you undoubtedly boosts confidence but there is a right time for every word and gesture. Knowing when to step in and prevent and when to stand back and allow are crucial skills which will impact on people’s chances of recovery.
Recovery is not a buzz word. It is an ethos, a philosophy, an approach to life and caring.
You can buy Lorraine’s book here. It has recently been reviewed on the Royal College of Psychiatrists website
Filed under: Exhibitions
Aidan Moesby a text based artist has just installed Do you think we can talk about this? a solo exhibition at the Centre For Life in Newcastle. It is a collection of pieces which reflect on his personal experience of being diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and addresses elements of the personal and cultural agenda surrounding mental health. It runs until June
Aidan says: “At once we are fascinated by those perceived as kooky, off beat, crazy and then we tire of them and vilify them and perpetuate the stereotypical images and viewpoints of those living with an enduring mental health condition. I hope we can talk about it, I hope we can get a right good open honest discussion going”
Information about the artist
Text Based Artist – Installation, Letterpress, Printing, Mixed Media
A socially engaged text based artist Moesbys’ work is informed through the linguistic and visual imagery we use to create and make sense of the worlds we inhabit. Text based installations explore the conflict within the personal and cultural agendas of our Cultural and Psychological heritage. He utilises a variety of media, technologies and approaches in order to realise the artwork yet the text and its imbued meaning is always paramount
Framing of the Work:
Aidan Moesby utilises metaphor to provoke a re-evaluation of what it means to experience psychological conflict. The work references the ‘Personal’ and ‘Cultural’ worlds. It explores the preoccupation with the ‘Pop’ psychology of the disposable ‘low brow’ visual media culture which offers the empty promise of 15 minutes of fame through simulated catharsis.
The work has everything and nothing to do with his own experience of Bipolar Disorder. We all experience the highs, lows and ennui of life. To some extent we have lost our sense of Self and our Integrity. Validation is sought from others rather than from within. We yearn for vicarious fulfilment, the projected phantasy, the glossy dream, the ‘quick fix’ down on ‘Easy Street’. We do not wish to look at or acknowledge our own psychological fragilities, and very often we do not wish to attend to those fragilities of others lest we catch them.
Aidan attempts to explore the frailty of the Human Condition in all its imperfect splendour. He mines a rich and complex vein of written and visual language in an effort to gain an understanding and awareness of how we can make sense our place in the worlds we create. Ultimately he acknowledges that we are in a state of constant flux and the work remains to inhabit the often subtle, fragile and dynamic boundary between the conflicted continuum of ‘ease’ and ‘dis-ease’.
More information about Aidan Moesby can be found online at:
http://textartist.blogspot.com/
Filed under: Theatre
The Almeida Theatre has, of late, been concerning itself with the wider aspects of psychiatry, mounting a number of strong productions on the theme of mental illness. The Knot of the Heart, a new play written by David Eldridge, is no exception. With its well-drawn characters and sharp dialogue, it is also, arguably, its finest on the subject. The play is about addiction; the compulsion, the self-destruction, the relentless careening towards rock-bottom, the loss, the bewilderment, the relapse, recovery and relapse again. It is also, crucially, about our need to understand why people become addicts. It is to the play’s credit that it offers little in the way of answers.
Lisa Dillon is superb in the role of Lucy, which was written specifically for her, and plays her as self-indulgent and spoiled but also charismatic and frank. Lucy is a young woman on the brink of her dream career as a children’s TV presenter caught smoking heroin in her dressing room. She loses her job and ends up living with her indulgent mother in posh house in Islington. Their enmeshed relationship is tenderly portrayed with Lucy shown to be both manipulative addict and loving vulnerable daughter. As Lucy moves quickly onto injecting heroin and selling her body to pay for it, her mother acts as intermediary, ‘facilitating her addiction’ by seeing dealers on her behalf. Margot Leicester handles the role beautifully as a bewildered caring mother put in a dreadful bind by one beloved daughter whilst subtly dismissing the other, Abigail Cruttenden, as hard and functional, despite expecting her to sort the whole thing out. The play follows their complex family dynamics as Lucy’s addiction plunges them into debt and despair. Lucy spends several spells in rehab and her many healthcare encounters are realistically executed.
Addiction is portrayed as a complex phenomenon, full of moral dilemmas. The confusion and difficulty they have in making sense of their situation is palpable. In one striking scene Lucy is found by her mother half-collapsed in the living room and asks desperately ‘Why?’, ‘Because the rest is background now’ Lucy offers weakly, the best non-explanation she can find. The reality of addiction is never glamourised nor is its often sordid consequences used to shock. In one notable scene, her mother finally realises the full extent of Lucy’s addiction, ‘How did you get the money for the drugs darling? ‘You know Mummy’, ‘How did your friend die?’ ‘You know Mummy’. The sinking terror is conveyed in the spaces between what isn’t said.
There are suggestions within the play of what might have predisposed Lucy to becoming an addict; her father’s death from sudden alcohol withdrawal, her mother’s difficulty in boundary setting, their enmeshed relationship, her mother’s alcoholism and her mother’s high expectations. However, these are all, I believe, shown additively to have rather weak explanatory power and I think this is a real strength of the play.
The Knot of the Heart is well-paced, taut, expertly crafted and clear in its aims: addiction is a heady combination of unfortunate exposure, bad luck, poor choices, and, importantly, something that could touch your life too. As is often the case in real life, Lucy is left with hope but no concrete answers and, alas, no happy ever after.
Dr Lisa Conlan, ST5 Addiction Psychiatry
Almeida Knot of the Heart Webpage