Between the Lines and Overcoming What Was Psychologically Left Behind

PSYCHIATRIC VIEWS ON THE DAILY NEWS

There was an unexpected bonus available from our recent participation in the Door Kinetic Arts Festival (DKAF) discussed yesterday. The renowned developer and director of the festival, Eric Simonson, modestly (as usual) told us that he had written a book over the last year, titled Between the Lines: Steppenwolf’s Seagull and a Reluctant Actor’s Journey Back to the Stage. It turned out to be a focused memoir on overcoming something important that was left behind. My wife and I bought it immediately.

One of the recent popular art forms has been memoirs, although very few by psychiatrists. We did cover a few in the December 16, 2020, article titled “Disclosing Ourselves: A Review of 4 Psychiatrist Memoirs.”

Last year, one of the DKAF guests, Ricky Ian Gordon, published a memoir titled, Seeing Through: A Chronicle of Sex, Drugs, and Opera. At the festival, he publicly shared talking about the psychotherapeutic help he received. Perhaps someday a memoir in process would be the focus of a potential participant.

I quickly started to read Mr Simonson’s memoir and finished it soon after returning home. The focus was fascinating and psychiatric in its own way. Take the book’s title, “Between the Lines.” We psychiatrists, especially in psychodynamic psychotherapy, read between the spoken lines of the patient with our "third ear” for deeper meanings.

The crux of the always important story is that Eric had dropped out of acting due to reported stage fright over 30 years back. However, to his surprise, he was asked to act once again in the Chekhov play “Seagull” for the 2022 opening of the new Steppenwolf theater in Chicago. After a somewhat rocky and challenging start, his wife helped him move on by recommending that he focus on the character he was playing rather than himself. The rest was smoother sailing.

I, too, have been psychologically rescued by a loved one, my wife Rusti, a natural therapist and bringer of psychological sunshine. Once we became partners, I stopped having destructive accidents. I owe my life—and much more—to her.

I found Eric overcoming his challenge astonishing. Imagine going back in time to try to accomplish something that was left behind due to its traumatic impact. Actually, our patients who are trying to recover from past trauma often do that by processing what has been dissociated from consciousness, but they do it confidentially with a hopefully compassionate, empathic, and skillful therapist. It is unclear if Mr Simonson had any formal psychotherapeutic help, but what a courageous decision to try to act once again on such a public stage! I would rate it a great psychological success and give it 5+ stars on a 0-5 scale.

He did directly reference psychiatry toward the close of his memoir. As a director, he came to feel that “I was meant to be more of a group therapist than anything else” (page 140). In overcoming his stage fright, he found the key to “be in the moment, dammit, no matter what” (page 154), a goal of meditation. He starts the last formal chapter, “Going Home,” with this quote from another writer, Joan Didion, from her book Slouching Towards Bethlehem:

“I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demands to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.”

Good psychological advice to us all, I think, especially as we age and try to put together the meaning and unfinished business of our lives, as Mr Simonson accomplished so astonishing well in his heroic journey.

Dr Moffic is an award-winning psychiatrist who specialized in the cultural and ethical aspects of psychiatry and is now in retirement and retirement as a private pro bono community psychiatrist. A prolific writer and speaker, he has done a weekday column titled “Psychiatric Views on the Daily News” and a weekly video, “Psychiatry & Society,” since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. He was chosen to receive the 2024 Abraham Halpern Humanitarian Award from the American Association for Social Psychiatry. Previously, he received the Administrative Award in 2016 from the American Psychiatric Association, the one-time designation of being a Hero of Public Psychiatry from the Speaker of the Assembly of the APA in 2002, and the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in 1991. He is an advocate and activist for mental health issues related to climate instability, physician burnout, and xenophobia. He is now editing the final book in a 4-volume series on religions and psychiatry for Springer: Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Christianity, and now The Eastern Religions, and Spirituality. He serves on the Editorial Board of Psychiatric Times.