Moving Day

This blog(ger) is officially moving today to its successor site Blue to Blue (http://www.bluetoblue.org/). As I've said, the content will be similar, so if you've stayed with me so far, I hope you'll come along.

To those kind bloggers who have included Ars Psychiatrica in your blogrolls, I hope you will kindly replace it in your lists with its sequel, and I regret your trouble in doing so. Ars Psychiatrica in its current state will remain online, but future posts will appear on Blue to Blue.

Thanks for reading.

Fortyish Food for Thought

A section of William Butler Yeats's "Vacillation:"

Get all the gold and silver that you can,

Satisfy ambition, or animate

The trivial days and ram them with the sun,

And yet upon these maxims meditate:

All women dote upon an idle man

Although their children need a rich estate;

No man has ever lived that had enough

Of children's gratitude or woman's love.

No longer in Lethean foliage caught

Begin the preparation for your death

And from the fortieth winter by that thought

Test every work of intellect or faith

And everything that your own hands have wrought,

And call those works extravagance of breath

That are not suited for such men as come

Proud, open-eyed and laughing to the tomb.

The full poem is here.

From Cradle to Grave

Winslow Homer, Northeaster

"Life is a series of hellos and goodbyes,

I'm afraid it's time for goodbye again."

Billy Joel, "Say Goodbye to Hollywood" (for Anonymous)

A highfalutin way of saying the same thing is Walt Whitman's prodigious "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," the first and last sections of which follow:

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,

Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle,

Out of the Ninth-month midnight,

Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child

leaving his bed wander'd alone, bareheaded, barefoot,

Down from the shower'd halo,

Up from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as

if they were alive,

Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,

From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,

From your memories sad brother, from the fitful risings and

fallings I heard,

From under that yellow half-moon late-risen and swollen as if

with tears,

From those beginning notes of yearning and love there in the

mist,

From the thousand responses of my heart never to cease,

From the myriad thence-arous'd words,

From the word stronger and more delicious than any,

From such as now they start the scene revisiting,

As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,

Borne hither, ere all eludes me, hurriedly,

A man, yet by these tears a little boy again,

Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,

I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,

Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond

them,

A reminiscence sing.

------

Whereto answering, the sea,

Delaying not, hurrying not,

Whisper'd me through the night, and very plainly before

daybreak,

Lisp'd to me the low and delicious word death,

And again death, death, death, death,

Hissing melodious, neither like the bird nor like my arous'd

child's heart,

But edging near as privately for me rustling at my feet,

Creeping thence steadily up to my ears and laving me softly

all over,

Death, death, death, death, death.

Which I do not forget,

But fuse the song of my dusky demon and brother,

That he sang to me in the moonlight on Paumanok's gray

beach,

With the thousand responsive songs at random,

My own songs awaked from that hour,

And with them the key, the word up from the waves,

The word of the sweetest song and all songs,

That strong and delicious word which, creeping to my feet,

(Or like some old crone rocking the cradle, swathed in sweet

garments, bending aside,)

The sea whisper'd me.

The full poem is here.

Bruno: The Definitive (Thumbnail) Review

I don't make it to the movies very often (I feel fairly sure the Blue Flower doesn't grow there), so when I do, it's worth a post. I enjoyed Bruno more than I expected to (the umlaut is there, it's just really small). What I disliked about Borat was not the ridicule of those who richly deserved it (Pamela Anderson; the rabidly xenophobic rodeo crowd), but the humiliation of a number of well-intentioned but typically (American) average folks who committed the crime of being insularly ignorant about "furriners."

Bruno manages to offend just about everyone, but the object of satire per se is the absurdly hubristic figure of Bruno himself, and what is satirized is not so much homosexuality or its practices as the universal target of satire: self-important buffoonery. Sure, it pokes fun at both homosexuals and homophobes, but it does not impale (so to speak). The raunchiness certainly is a bit much (as I'm sure it was intended to be), but it doesn't negate the hilarity of Bruno lurching, Kramer-like, head first into one metaphorical wall after another.

The opening minutes, in which Bruno throws a ripe-for-disruption fashion show into an uproar by wearing an all-velcro suit (and having a disastrous encounter with a curtain), are worth admission in themselves. I also particularly enjoyed the Paula Abdul segment (because of what she sits on) as well as the tableau of Bruno, ludicrously attired in African garb, removing from an airport baggage carousel a large tusk, an elephant foot, and a box marked "fragile" and containing a black baby. Everything is over-the-top, but that is Sacha Baron Cohen's shtick. The Ron Paul piece wasn't funny (he was one of the few unsuspected targets who acted with unsanctimonious dignity) and should have been cut, but overall Bruno wisely clocks in at (I'm guessing) 90 minutes or so. In an age when even good movies are too long (everything is getting quicker--except movies), this is a triumph in itself.

Bruno is not for the sexually squeamish, and its gay theme is no instance of social activism, but when it is funny, it is very funny indeed.

Rebooting Blues

Franz Marc, The Blue Fox

Is the blue fox anything like the black dog? As I get ready to close this blog (although not to delete it) and embark on a successor, I've been trying to arrive at a name that will be just right. I decided it ought to have "blue" in the title, for multiple reasons. It is a beloved hue, that of sea and sky, and it also denotes melancholia, which seems to me the paradigmatic mental disorder.

For Novalis and the German Romantics, the "blue flower" also symbolized the unattainable object of the poetic quest. I thought about simply naming the new blog "The Blue Flower," but that is a bit, well, flowery, not to mention the fact that several blogs--most of them defunct by now of course--have borne that title already (as did Penelope Fitzgerald's wondrous historical novel about Novalis's short life). So I thought about "The Blue Blossom" or "The Blue Bloom," but these were either too alliterative or too, well, "blooey."

I love both the color and the word "ultramarine" ("beyond the sea"), but a long-dead blog already bears that title. Similarly "lapis lazuli," but that would be a bit baffling. "The Blue Book" or "The Blue Blog" would be nicely whimsical, but little more, and are probably already taken too. I considered "bolt from the blue," but it seemed trite; "the blue bulletin" seemed flat. "The blue bulb" carries the intriguing double meaning, both botanical and incandescent, but somehow didn't seem to flow.

So I thought about borrowing a blue phrase from Emily Dickinson, my poetic ideal. Her poems famously mention "my blue peninsula" as well as "a slash of blue," but believe it or not, now-expired blogs have used those titles also. Other instances include "breadths of blue," "withes of supple blue," and "inns of molten blue." Finally appeared the blue example that struck Goldilocks as being just right:

The Brain -- is wider than the Sky --
For -- put them side by side --
The one the other will contain
With ease -- and You -- beside --

The Brain is deeper than the sea --
For -- hold them -- Blue to Blue --
The one the other will absorb --
As Sponges -- Buckets -- do --

The Brain is just the weight of God --
For -- Heft them -- Pound for Pound --
And they will differ -- if they do --
As Syllable from Sound --

Blue to Blue--that's it, reflecting the refracting contributions of psychiatry and poetry, and without the stiff quasi-professional patina of Ars Psychiatrica. Blue to Blue juxtaposes brain and Earth, the vastness of the one rivaling the enormity of the other. Other areas of medicine deal merely with the humdrum body, while psychiatry confronts the universe of consciousness. "I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, if it were not that I have bad dreams," Hamlet said. Poetry at its best acts as a rupture in reality, swinging open a portal onto the void.

As subtitle I'm thinking of "Psychology, Speculation, and Sea Change" (I'm a sucker for sibilants). According to Ariel:

Full fathom five thy father lies.
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.

This summons another fascination, that of self-transformation, by self and of self by the sea of media and molecular influences we swim in. What about ourselves can be changed? How and how much? Should we change or merely accept?

The new blog's content will probably be similar to this, although with more emphasis on poetry (perhaps even--groan--some of my own). Under construction.

Addendum: Yes, others came to mind--"Blue Lagoon," "Baby Blue," "Blue Devil," and "Blue's Clues"--but, alas, all already used. "Cyanotic" might still be available, come to think of it.

Anniversary

The man-hero is not the exceptional monster,

But he that of repetition is most master.

Wallace Stevens

After 224 posts, Ars Psychiatrica is a year old--well, not quite, but in about three weeks, and as my kids would say, what's the harm in marking the occasion a bit early?

I undertook this blog after a relocation in which I chose to depart a tenured position in academia (after realizing that while in most of academia, tenure is life-saving, in medical academia it is merely an honorific). I had published a number of papers in obscure medical ethics and humanities venues, but felt like I still had things to say. I happened to find myself in a most peculiar job which had scandalous amounts of down time; for many months, most of the posts here were at least partially composed at work. Yes, it was a public job, so for quite a while this blog was taxpayer-funded; I am sorry, although it wasn't my fault (there really wasn't much else to do).

After a while I left that lame job behind and took on another one which, while involving fewer hours overall, kept me far busier while I was there. Due to that and other obligations, I found myself with less time to write, and probably I got lazy too, which is why in recent months illustrations and quotes petered out, and posts became less frequent. I noticed that readership went down: I think people really like cool pictures, although I wish content alone could carry the day.

The biggest challenge has been to define content and target audience: I have been torn between making professional issues at least the centerpiece of the blog on the one hand, and the inclination to give free rein to my eclectic instincts on the other. The latter has won out often enough that I'm sure that many people initially drawn to the blog in hopes of mainstream discussion of diagnosis and treatment were disappointed. I have found myself generally disinclined to write about work, narrowly construed. Shedding anonymity limited my openness as well.

Observing reading and commenting patterns has been fascinating. Some folks, to judge from both comments and Sitemeter data, come more or less to stay, while others, often after leaving comments suggesting the blog is the best thing since sliced bread, disappear, never to return. Was it something I said, or didn't say? Was s/he run over by a bus? I also think of Elaine's great Seinfeld line, and I paraphrase: "Is it possible that I'm not as attractive as I think I am?"

Timing and scheduling of posts remains tricky. Regularity and frequency help keep the blog's blood flowing, but a daily regimen can lead to some pretty perfunctory posts. Yet I dislike blogs where the author disappears for a few weeks every now and then with no explanation. Perhaps the best solution is scheduled posts a couple of times a week, such that folks know what to expect, yet one has time to work up something really worth posting. I'm curious too about all the abandoned blogs out there, which just stop without explanation: a dilapidated farmhouse in North Dakota, its occupants long gone for parts unguessed at.

I think blogging isn't done with me quite yet, but maybe it's time to overhaul the format, title, and theme. You know, go toe-to-toe with The Huffington Post. Mass appeal--MJ had it, why can't I? (Anonymous, don't answer that).

At the risk of being self-regarding (moi?), I thought I'd mention some of the posts during the year that I've enjoyed the most, usually because of the discussion they prompted. Some of this year's greatest hits: in one of my rare down-to-earth entries, You Be the Judge, folks helpfully advised me on a problem involving felines and unneighborly neighbors. A more highfalutin ethics discussion centered on capital punishment in Hippocrates and the Hangman.

I was tickled to get a surprise comment from the author himself after an appreciative review of Denis Dutton's The Art Instinct. While I enjoyed writing many of the literature entries most, they weren't the kind to generate a great deal of controversy or debate, but DFW Revisited attracted interest after Wallace's death last year. On a mainstream professional plane, posts on medication issues (On Med-Seeking and Old Wine, New Bottles) provoked not only lively comments but even a mention in the Los Angeles Times.

Easily my most controversial post, Uneasy Lies the Head, involved the political acceptability for high public office of those with major psychiatric diagnoses. I offered a heartfelt encomium of President Obama (The Case for Obama, Seriously) soon after his election last year (no, Retriever, I would not retract any of it today).

The question of proper compensation for psychiatrists attracted interest in How Much is a Psychiatrist Worth? The topic of the political persuasion of mental health professionals led to a rousing political tussle (I think Van der Leun has given up on me by now) in Where Liberals Lurk.

Finally, and more loftily, I and others considered spiritual issues in All in Your Head and The Missing All.

While I consider what to do now, I'll leave this post up for a while, so both panegyrics and take-downs are welcomed. Anyway, I figure the dog days start early here in the Carolinas...

Systole/Diastole

In the past couple of days The New York Times' Op-Ed section has featured two interestingly opposing views of the widely lambasted displays of Governors Mark Sanford and Sarah Palin. Stanley Fish, whose contrarian instincts were clearly at work here, argued that the emotional rawness exhibited by both figures should be honored as expressions of authenticity, and as refusals to play along with the artifice usually expected under the political microscope. In his view, the punditocracy viewed the two episodes with incomprehension precisely because they were not politically calculated. Omnia vincit amor.

David Brooks, while not condemning the two governors, saw their behavior as symptomatic of an age that has totally eschewed what used to be (at least in the days of the Founding Fathers, he suggested) a cultural ideal of decorum, dignity, and self-mastery. George Washington did not view his calm and relatively detached public face as some kind of mask--rather, it served the purpose of shaping (and not merely advertising) his moral and political conduct. The passions, whatever good they may do, are inherently potentially hazardous and must be curbed.

These positions more or less correspond to Romantic and Classical visions of the good life as consisting chiefly of feeling and order, respectively. I found myself agreeing with both of them, which suggests that the best life entails a balance of the two. Ages and cultures inevitably tilt more toward one or the other, and we have been in a Romantic age for quite a while now. The George Washingtons of the world just don't get the bloggers buzzing...

Is there some kind of parallel, even if not a simplistic one, between these two visions on the one hand and liberalism vs. conservatism on the other?