These Were a Few of My Favorite Psychiatric Things at the Door Kinetic Arts Festival

SayLi/AdobeStock

PSYCHIATRIC VIEWS ON THE DAILY NEWS

“When people are having self-transcendent moments through the arts, they’re expanding their conceptual boundaries and seeing the world differently. They’re seeing themselves differently.”¹

After the emotionally draining international trauma webinar a week ago Saturday that I reported on, my wife and I went to a 5-day arts seminar at Lawrence University’s Bjorklunden in beautiful Door County, Wisconsin. I reported on our attendance at the same seminar last year in my September 26, 2023, column “Travel Log: Astonished in the Morning and the Whole Rest of the Day.” Both were put together by Eric Simonson, a renowned theatre, opera, television and related arts director and writer. More on him tomorrow. The festival brings together artists of various fields to develop new works right before our eyes, supplemented by discussions as to their genesis and meaning.

Taking off from the song “My Favorite Things” from the “The Sound of Music,” these were among my favorite things that seemed to have psychiatric as well as artistic meaning.

Tapping and playing for John Coltrane’s birthday. In a rare multicultural collaborative endeavor between 4 tap dancers and a jazz quartet, Jumaane Taylor and his colleagues opened the festival. It was the late John Coltrane’s birthday on Monday and one of his most embraced jazz recordings was a long improvisatory version of “My Favorite Things.” Somewhat later in 1964, Coltrane released an album called “A Love Supreme,” which this group reinterpreted. It is a piece for which Coltrane added a poem of loving God; at the time he was also studying Eastern religious traditions, including Sufism. That associated to me of psychiatry’s journey from an atheistic emphasis to incorporating religious and spiritual considerations in patient care, as my colleagues and I did in our just published book, The Eastern Religions, Spirituality, and Psychiatry (Springer).

Ancient origins of juggling. Two modern men clowns, Benjamin & Thom & Thom & Benjamin, pushing the boundaries of the field, presented a history of juggling, accompanied with some astonishing demonstrations. It goes back over 4000 years, as evidence by figures excavated on the walls of at least 2 Egyptian chambers. The jugglers were women. We are not surprised by that, are we? Women have always juggled so much in their lives.

“Prick, the Play.” Speaking of women, yes, Prick is the double-entendre title of this play by Laurie Flanagan Hegge, in production by the Proboscis Theatre Company, directed by Jeff Mills. Here, the sharply pointed prick is what was used during the Witch Hunts in Scotland hundreds of years ago to determine who were witches by pricking the accused to see if she bled. Not only could one imagine how this related to our recent abortion law changes that limited how a woman can control their body, but as Laurie said, worldwide there is a simultaneous increase in witch hunts.

How to be an Indian in the 21st century. This is the title of the book by Louis V Clark III, half Oneida Indian and half Polish, which conveys how he met discrimination with humor and perseverance, using his strong Catholic beliefs and the Oneida principle of “looking ahead seven generations.” We in psychiatry know that right now Native Americans have the worst mental health statistics of any cultural group. The hope is that in 7 generations or much less, that will dissipate and their intergenerational transmission of trauma will be broken.

There was much more: a discussion of the leadership skills of Vince Lombardi as coach of the Green Bay Packers; the groundbreaking play “Company” by Stephen Sondheim, the connection of bipolar disorders and creativity; and the Art of the Cocktail (with nightly samples) by the award-winning Robert Simonson; and more. Once again, we attended with our friends we made last year: Mary, Rita, and Danielle.

The importance of storytelling was a constant. In psychiatry, storytelling is ubiquitous. Every patient case has its own story and published case studies are an essential source of knowledge.

Consequently, we were astonished once again this year and awe is usually therapeutic. This celebration of the creativity of the arts comes at a time when the arts have been cut in school education and in psychiatry. We used to have robust music therapy and arts therapy in our psychiatric hospitals. No more. The time for a revival is now.

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.

Reference

1. Magsamen S, Ross I. Your Brain on Art: How Arts Transforms Us. Random House; 2023.