Art as Therapy - using other people's art.

Sally Swain, on her Art and Soul blog, recently published a story (click on the link to read it) of one person's recovery from her grief through art. There are many such stories, not all of them leading to exhibitions and shifts in career direction as this one did.

Picasso Sculpture at MOMA
November 2015

Wikipedia says that art therapy began with the psychoanalytic interpretation of symbolism in the client's art work, but using art as therapy was discovered long before that, and art therapy itself has subsequently evolved into a great deal more than the psychoanalysts used it for, with a greater focus on self-expression rather than on interpretation.

Mostly when people talk about art as therapy they mean doing art. Alain de Botton (Swiss born philosopher and author of many well known books) and John Armstrong (Glasgow born philosopher and author now living in Melbourne) published a book in 2013 called Art as Therapy. In it they explored the notion that looking at art, if you do it in the right way, has therapeutic value as well. They contend that this therapeutic value has been lost in the modern world because when we look at art we ask the wrong questions of it and of ourselves.

As Alain de Botton's website says: "This book involves reframing and recontextualising a series of art works from across the ages and genres, so that they can be approached as tools for the resolution of difficult issues in individual life" 

It's an interesting idea that we can solve our problems by enjoying other people's creativity not just by exercising our own.

Enjoying work by Jim Shaw at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, November 2015

The Healing Power of Slam

If you have any doubt about the healing power of poetry read this. It's the story of Emtithal Mahmoud's win in this year's Individual World Poetry Slam a competition that attracts the world's best slam poets.
A member of the Yale Slam Poetry Team and in the final year of her undergraduate degree, Emi is heading for a career as a research physician. She won the competition not in spite of but because of the death of a beloved grandmother that occurred just as she set off to compete.

Emtithal Mahmoud

Emi says of her experience in the competition "you could lose yourself on stage and everyone was there to hold you....I came away from it feeling much better than when I went in and feeling like I did something for [her grandmother],” 

But its not just personal - its political as well. Emi has been a political activist since her teens. She was born in Sudan and her performances call upon her own and her family's experiences in the violence in her country of origin. 

Watch Emi performing at the 2015 National Poetry Slam. Emi's performances epitomise the powerful potential of spoken word poetry.

On the subject of creative uses of our tools of trade.....

...who'd have thought a hospital chart could become an educational intervention and a catalyst for creativity!

Ten years after graduating from Harvard Medical School Rita Charon returned to University to complete a PhD in English Literature. She then set about melding her two academic careers. In 1998 at Columbia University Charon founded a program in Narrative Medicine. Amongst many other wonderful exercises and activities, medical students in their 3rd and 4th years were asked to write "parallel charts" - tracking the things that were not mentioned in the official charts about the patients emotional experience of hospitalisation. Once a week the students were asked to read their accounts to each other. The point?  To encourage young doctors to listen to the patients' stories and address their patients' whole humanity.

“When you write, you often discover not only what the patient is thinking and feeling, but what you are thinking and feeling,” says Charon. As she explains to her students, “These memories, these sadnesses, these feelings influence the care you give."

Charon has gone on to publish several books including "Narrative Medicine, Honoring the Stories of Illness". She has also served as editor in chief of the journal Literature and Medicine the biennial journal of the Institute of Medical Humanities published by Johns Hopkins University Press.

Columbia has had a Masters of Science in Narrative Medicine since 2009 under Charon's direction. 

Charon hopes her program encourages more doctors to write about their experiences. “They now bring us manuscripts, and I have gotten the Writing Division at Columbia to hold a workshop here, once or twice a month, where these aspiring authors can get editing counsel,”

Read more about  the Columbia program HERE and watch Dr Charon's TED talk called Honouring the Stories of Illness where she talks about teaching the art of story telling and receiving HERE

Art in Agar

Neurons - the winning entry from
the Agar Art Competition
by Mehmet Berkman and Maria Penil

If you think there's no art in medical science take a look at this article. It's a report from the Huffington Post about the American Society for Microbiology's first Agar Art Competition. Details are incredibly difficult to find on the very serious and scientific ASM website but I finally found the announcement here with links to pictures of all the placegetters. It's got me wondering what other tools of the trade we can get creative with.

 Just by way of example, there's a GP I know from Facebook who has a travelling auriscope. Wherever he goes his auriscope stars in great little photos, amusing and provocative, that make pertinent comments on life, the universe and everything.

How else might we use our tools of trade to brighten up the world?

How to Get Back to Your Creativity after a Long While Away

I knew Sally Swain , artist, teacher, writer and therapist, was a treasure when I met her, so I asked her to write something for Creative Doctors about getting back in touch with creativity. Here it is:

"Art-making, writing, performing…something sparked you early in life. You had to let it go to immerse yourself in your medical career. You ache to return to that passion, but don’t know how. Or there’s no time, or it seems too hard or frivolous. Maybe you believe you’re not really very ‘good’ at it anyway, so why bother?

"Rhyming Cuplet - foundground" by Sally Swain

Tread lightly.

Approach your long-lost creative self with tenderness and care. You might have Artist Wounds from long ago. A teacher banished you from the school choir. Other kids in your class were praised for their neat drawings, while you were ignored. Everyone said your sister was ‘the artist’ in the family and you were ‘the clever one’.

How to heal an Artist Wound? You need more than a quick dab with mercurochrome.