Exchanges with the Humanities

Derek Russell Davis

doi:10.1192/s0140078900011354

Abstract

Psychiatrists, who in their treatment of mental disorder apply theories, concepts and method drawn from many branches of knowledge, have shown remarkably little interest in the humanities. Distinct from the natural and social sciences, these are concerned with human behaviour and culture. Their neglect contrasts with the keen interest in psychopathology shown in many humanities departments in universities, from which flows a stream of publications on the psychopathology of the famous, writers and artists, and the characters they create. The data on which such studies are based are similar to those making up case-histories, as Jaspers (1913–46; English translation 1963) pointed out, although the selection of the latter tends to be more focussed by a theory.

Highlights

Many writers and artists have made studies of madness in order to reveal mental processes at times of crisis
Another is that in the biographies of such people we may see, as Jaspers put it, 'what can never be observed for the average patient or institutional inmate, and what will add depth to our knowledge'
Strindberg, Van Gogh and Dostoevsky are of special interest because in their work they were concerned, less with representing the outer world they shared with others, more with expressing their own inner reality. (This tendency is a theme in the development of Expressionism in the first quarter of the century.) Biographies, whatever dis advantages they may have as material for study, have some advantages over case-histories

Summary

Exchanges with the Humanities

Psychiatrists, who in their treatment of mental disorder apply theories, concepts and method drawn from many branches of knowledge, have shown remarkably little inter est in the humanities. Creative works like these are sub jected to disciplined study by literary or other critics in order to answer questions about what the writer or artist (or musician) expresses, or what a particular passage means, and to put what is expressed into a wider context. The collaboration of a literary critic and a psychiatrist in such studies is worthwhile when both agree that the symptoms to be examined are not the capricious product of a brain whose function has broken down but have meaning in relation to past experience or present circumstances This view towards symptoms, which is essential to psychopathology, gained strength at the beginning of this century as a result of the development of psychoanalysis. Does it accommodate them? Is it belied by other behaviours? The testing may be no more elaborate than that applied in doing a crossword puzzle: do the down words and the across words cor roborate one another?

The strategies of psychotherapy

The phenomena of illness

The second self