Art of Psychiatry Society

Upcoming Art of Psychiatry Society meeting:

‘Creative practice as mutual recovery’

Speaker meeting with Professor Paul Crawford

Venue: Seminar Room 4 Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience.
Date: Thursday 22 September 2016
Time: 1800

Please join us for our first meeting after the summer break.  We are excited to welcome Paul Crawford who is Professor of Health Humanities at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, The University of Nottingham.  He directs the Centre for Social Futures at the Institute of Mental Health and co-directs the Health Humanities Research Priority Area.  His research is in social and cultural aspects of mental health.  He is Principal Investigator of ‘Creative Practice as Mutual Recovery’, a £1.5m study funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council UK.

Prof Crawford is presenting paper on the potential for ‘mutual recovery’ between clinicians, informal carers and service users through creative practices in the arts and humanities.

More information about Prof Crawford’s Creative Practice as Mutual Recovery study is found here: http://www.healthhumanities.org/creative_practice_mutual_recovery/

***

This is an open meeting and all are welcome (including SLaM employees, psychiatry trainees, service users, members of the public).  No need to book.  It’s okay to turn up late.  Entrance is free!

Crisps and wine available.

***
Contact us:
www.artofpsychiatry.co.uk
@artofpsychiatry
theartofpsychiatry@gmail.com

***

How to find the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience:

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/ioppn/about/findus/index.aspx

On June 10 2013 psychiatrist Allen Frances delivered the 2013 Freud memorial lecture.

From the Freud museum website:

Allen Frances MD was the Chair of the Task Force that prepared the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV), often called the bible of the American psychiatric profession. However, he has been a vocal critic of the new DSM V, condemning what he calls its diagnostic hyperinflation. His new book, Saving Normal, is part mea culpa, part j‘accuse, and part cri de coeur. It explores why psychiatry has always been subject to so many fads, while deploring the medicalization of everyday human experience and the excessive use of psychiatric medicine.

In the prestigious Freud Memorial Lecture, Dr Frances argues that the current under-estimation of Freud is in part the price for his having been overestimated during his lifetime. ‘It is unwise to worship Freud or the DSM as bibles – but equally unwise not to know them,’ he says. His lecture will draw attention to which of Freud’s contributions he thinks still relevant, which quaint historical artefacts.

A graduate of the Columbia University Psychoanalytic Center, where he taught the Freud course for ten years, Allen Francis is now Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University, where previously he was Chair.

Prof Frances has kindly given us permission to make the slides from his presentation available to readers of this blog.  They can be downloaded via this link:

Freud lecture slides

A number of us attended the talk and we hope to post some thoughts here in due course.  In the meantime, please leave any thoughts or reactions as comments.

Institute of Psychoanalysis. 19 May 2012
Beate Schumacher, Vivian Green, chaired by Jenny stoker

The Institute of Psychoanalysis is currently hosting a dynamic series of lectures, film screenings and workshops under the name ‘Beyond the Couch’. These aim to engage the public and the wider psychotherapeutic community in a dialogue on the  contemporary aspects of psychoanalysis in modern life.

A recent Saturday morning lecture entitled ‘Oedipus Through the Life Cycle: Childhood’ used two case presentations to examine the clinical and therapeutic importance of the oedipal developmental stage (and its successful navigation) within psychoanalysis. Freud took his inspiration from Sophocles’ Greek tragedy, Oedipus Rex, in which Oedipus is doomed to kill his father, Laertes, and marry his mother, Jocasta. When they discover what they have done, guilt, shame and suicide follow. It is a tale of love and desire on both sides. It was posited by Freud (and later developed by Melanie Klein) as a fundamental stage in emotional development, consisting mainly of unconscious feelings of wanting to possess the parent of the opposite sex.

The first case was presented by Beate Schumacher, ‘How Can You Remember the Name of the Father? On the oedipal development of a single mother’s daughter.’ This addressed how the oedipus complex can develop and resolve appropriately when the parent of the opposite sex is absent. The case followed 6 year-old Stephanie who was likeable, curious but behaviourally troubled. She was brought into analysis by her mother concerned about her behaviour at home and with her peers. Schumacher looked at the case as one of disturbed oedipal development; how can one navigate this stage without a father? But there is always a third, put by Britton as ‘the crucial importance of the three points of the psychic triangle’ and Schumacher used Lacan’s concept of ‘the name of the father’ to conceptualise Stephanie’s difficulties and our understanding of this stage.

Viviane Green presented the second case of a man in his late thirties addicted to internet pornography. She took us through the case from a developmental perspective, looking at the symptoms as taken from the unresolved oedipal stage into adulthood. Pornography is seen here as a form of omnipotent seduction, with no need to account for the other. This has obvious parallels in that relinquishing omnipotence within (sexual) relationships is part of Oedipal development. Heather Woods is a psychoanalyst with an interest in this area and has suggested that pornography ‘colludes with a person’s wishes but conceals from them their origin and meaning’  and this, according to Viviane Green, is this way addiction to pornography acts like a classic psychoanalytic symptom (and relates to Oedipal development).

There was a good deal of time given for discussion and questions which allowed for points to be clarified and difficult concepts elaborated on. All in all, a very interesting and enriching experience that I would recommend to anyone with an interest in psychoanalytic work.

Dr Lisa Conlan
ST6 General Adult Psychiatry

By Dr Penny Brown

It all started with a bomb scare… Outside the conference venue (The Cumberland Hotel, Marble Arch)

You can download two of the conference’s sessions from here – Darian Leader’s afternoon keynote speech is well worth a listen

This report initially featured in the London Division December newsletter.

On an overcast autumnal day in central London, three hundred and fifty psychiatry trainees defied tube strikes and bomb scares to attend the third Annual London Psychiatry Trainee Conference. Joined by a host of names from literature, art, stage and screen, the trainees enjoyed a wide variety of entertaining and thought-provoking sessions on ‘The Art of Psychiatry’.

The conference has become an annual fixture since 2008 and Dr Stephen Ginn, East London ST4 in General Adult Psychiatry, took on the challenge of organising the 2010 meeting. He chose to focus the theme on psychiatry and the arts, explaining his motivation as follows:

‘Many psychiatrists, including trainees, have a strong interest in the creative arts and this informs their practice.  Both psychiatrists and creative artists are concerned with exploring human behaviour and motivation, and come to the subject of the mental disorder from different viewpoints and with different narratives. For instance the language creative artists and psychiatrists use to record or express psychopathology is totally different but equally valid. I have a strong belief that we have much to learn from one another and my motivation for making this year’s London trainee conference about the shared elements between psychiatry and the arts was to explore this space and to give trainees an opportunity to examine their practice from alternative viewpoints.’

Stephen and his organising committee planned a day of lectures and workshops, and in addition to inviting artists and psychiatrists from a number of disciplines, trainees were also encouraged to present their own work. The committee were overwhelmed with proposals of trainee presentations on wide-ranging topics, from studies of ‘Outsider Art’ to psychodynamic interpretations of the baptism scene from ‘There Will be Blood‘.

On the day of the conference, the Cumberland Hotel, with a lobby filled with contemporary art, set the scene for what was to come. On display at the entrance to the conference area was an exhibition of ‘Portraits: Patients and Psychiatrists‘. This award-winning collaboration between artist Gemma Anderson and forensic psychiatrist Dr Tim McInerny is a series of portraits of psychiatrists and their patients, exploring how patients experience mental illness and how this is formulated and treated by the doctor.

“Connor” by Gemma Anderson from ‘Portraits: Patients and Psychiatrists’

After an introduction from Dr Michael Maier, Head of the London Deanery School of Psychiatry, Professor Dinesh Bhugra gave the first keynote lecture on ‘Using films for teaching and cultural competence’. With examples from Hollywood to Bollywood, he demonstrated how film can teach psychiatrists about mental state examination (such as Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of OCD in As Good as it Gets) and psychotherapeutic concepts (counter-transference in Analyze This), as well as cultural sensitivities and prejudice.

Professor Dinesh Bhugra giving the first keynote lecture ‘Using films for teaching and cultural competence’

The enjoyment and good-humour of the delegates was evident even when the following session was delayed due to a combination of bomb scares and stranded pianos, but after an extended coffee break we were treated to a performance of ‘Losing It’, a two-woman show tracing the emotional breakdown of Ruby Wax, through monologue and music, with songs performed by jazz singer Judith Owen whom Wax met while a psychiatric inpatient. Wax’s depictions of her own struggle with bipolar disorder, as well as group therapy in the addictions-riddled world of the Priory, were both amusing and sensitive, and her work in breaking the stigma of mental illness can only be welcomed.

Ruby Wax and Judith Owen perform “Losing It”

The conference was then divided into ten parallel sessions. A team of dramatists and directors discussed theatre and television depictions of psychiatry, and artists explored the role of art in expressing and understanding mental illness. In a workshop on psychiatry and graphic novels, Darryl Cunningham and Philippa Perry gave examples of how graphic novels can provide an accessible but educational medium for discussing mental health issues and battling its associated stigma. Poet Dr Sarah Wardle read from her own work and discussed the benefits to doctors of reading poetry. Author Will Self drew a substantial crowd, despite competing with the delayed lunch, and gave a thought-provoking reading of his latest novel ‘Walking to Hollywood‘, which included surreal stories that raised questions about our daily assumptions. The roles of psychiatry in film and literature were explored, and in discussing psychiatry and music Dr Andrew Johns gave a fascinating talk which included a psychopathy checklist on Wagner’s Siegfried.

Three sessions were led by trainees who discussed their own studies of creative arts and psychiatry as well as experiences working abroad, and opportunities for creativity in teaching psychiatry were demonstrated by the Extreme Psychiatry team.

Will Self discusses Psychiatry and Literature

The afternoon keynote lecture was given by psychoanalyst and author Darian Leader. He spoke about the psychodynamic treatment of psychotic patients using the example of German judge Daniel Schreber, whose memoirs of his own mental illness were later interpreted by Jacques Lacan. Leader went on to join Nell Lyshon, the first female playwright at Shakespeare’s Globe with ‘Bedlam’, Sarah Wardle, Gemma Anderson and Dr Tim McInerny to take part in the final plenary session discussing ‘What can creative artists and psychiatrists teach each other’. Lyshon was accompanied by three poets from Vita Nova, a theatre company providing writing workshops to recovering addicts, who read self-penned poems about their own experiences of mental illness to a captivated audience.

Delegates and members of the plenary panel Dr Tim McInerny, Gemma Anderson, Nell Lyshon and poets from Vita Nova enjoying “Losing It” ealier in the day

The conference ended with a poster prize presentation, won by Dr Paul Wallang (ST6 Forensic Psychiatry, East London) whose poster on “Wittgenstein’s Legacy and Narrative Networks” was perfectly in keeping with the theme. All in all the day was a huge success enjoyed by delegates and speakers alike, as was clearly evident later on in the hotel bar!