Meeting Joan Erikson in the spring of 1989 was an immensely important milestone in the development of my ideas about the value of using art forms to help people with psychiatric illness connect and find a place in the world. We started communicating by letter about a year before and I finally worked up the courage to ask if she would be part of a film about her work. My partner Les Nirenberg and I invited her to Toronto in June to shoot it - produced and directed by our company Mental Health Library.
Joan was born in Canada, had been away for over 70 years and relished the thought of a return visit. Her father had been an Anglican clergyman in Napanee and Joan’s early rebellious nature led her to run away from Bishop Strachan School in Toronto (she asked if we could drive past it on our way to the airport before she left) to explore the world of modern dance. She met Erik, who was studying psychoanalysis with Freud, at a masked ball in Vienna and they married in 1930. They came to the US in 1950; Erik taught at Harvard, Yale and University of California at Berkley, and for many years they led a bi-coastal life, balancing three children with their work. During the time spent at Berkley, they worked together on their eight-cycles of human development. which has maintained a central position in subsequent formulations of psychological theory.
In 1951 Erik was appointed Director at the Austen Riggs Centre in Stockbridge Mass and soon after, Joan became Director of Activities. In her characteristically modest way, she describes it ” Well, I was a wife and my husband went to work there so I looked around for something to do.” Her humility didn’t in any way lessen her strong belief in the dignity of people with mental illness. She always loved to say that in the studio sessions, “they aren’t patients, they’re artists, they shouldn’t be observed and diagnosed, they should be allowed to experiment, explore and enjoy themselves.”
At the time we met, I had been working on the inpatient psychiatry unit at Toronto General Hospital for about five years, involving students from the Ontario College of Art, writers through a Canada Council program and dancers from York University in sessions with our patients. I was establishing my ideas about the value of what these individual artists contributed and defining the difference between what we were doing and art, dance or music therapy - valuable disciplines but not what was needed in our setting. Meeting Joan Erikson not only introduced me to the pure joy of her wonderfully generous and imaginative spirit but also provided me with a very solid framework of support for the use of creative activities so I could move ahead with energy and confidence.
The wisdom of her perceptions lingers with me from many of the conversations we had both on and off camera. She spoke often of the importance of play, how we as adults need to maintain our ability to play in order to be creative, and how children must be allowed time to play so they can develop the strength and potential of their imaginations and their inner worlds. She also had very clear notions about the value of art forms in and of themselves, not as diagnostic tools, but as a way to make connections with the environment by exploring colour, shape, form and technique, and most of all, as a way to have fun. As well as fostering creativity in other people, Joan was a practicing artist; her jewelry has been exhibited at MoMA; she wrote poetry and was the author of seven books… and she always moved with the willowy grace of a dancer! My last visit with her was in the summer of 1996 at her home on Cape Cod. She died in 1997 at 95, leaving all of us who were fortunate enough to know her richer for her friendship and inspiration.
Les Nirenberg died in January 2010, I miss both his collaboration and his formidable sense of humour.
This blog is dedicated with great fondness to them both.
Thanks once again to John Bilodeau.
Thanks once again to John Bilodeau.
