People responded to the Port Stanley murals with a flood of nostalgia
… for dancing to Big Bands on a summer night, for great ships on the Great
Lakes, for freshwater fish by the shore and for the gentle life in smaller places
back in the day.
And, at around the same time I picked up a new book that
piqued my interest from many angles. In his introduction to The Age of Insight, Eric Kandel quotes his
countryman Sigmund Freud, “nostalgia reflects strange and secret yearnings…for
a life of quite another kind: wishes from late childhood never to be fulfilled
and not adapted to reality.” Anyone who watches Charlie Rose and
loves his monthly Brain Series as I do will recognize psychiatrist and author Kandel who co-hosts the series. Winner
of a Nobel Prize in 2000 for his brilliant work on memory storage in the brain,
he has an incredible knack for rendering complex concepts accessible - and the world’s greatest laugh, erupting from
somewhere behind his red bowtie. Although he was taken from his native city
when he was a child, his soul remains connected to the culture and intellectual
life in fin- de-siècle Vienna. “My heart
beats in ¾ time,” he says as he describes the rich and rewarding life and
times he was forced to leave behind. 
In Vienna in 1900, a group of leaders in science, medicine
and art revolutionized the thinking of the time about the human mind and how it
relates to art. Explorations were going on at the Vienna Medical School to
discover the connection between art and science. Scientists and artists began
to question together what we as viewers bring to a work of art, how we respond
to it and what’s involved in creating a work of art. The people involved in the dialogue included,
as well as Freud, novelist Arthur Schnitzler and artists Gustav Klimt and Oscar
Kokoschka.
Klimt's Anita Block-Bauer
One hundred years later, some enlightened medical schools
are realizing the importance of including and integrating various art forms in
the preparation of their students, broadening their training and deepening
their capacity for empathy. Many of you are using art in your practice to help
people heal and to explore, define and make sense of their lives. Although Eric
Kandel may be leading the pack, many people out there are making the world of
therapy a better place with art forms as the medium.
The Age of Insight reinvigorates
the intellectual enquiry that began in Vienna in 1900 and provides a link
between neuroscience and the humanities; a foundation for future work on their
connection and relationship to each other. There’s often a need to explain,
justify, and clarify why creative activities
are valuable, usually coming from
someone with a scientific (financial) agenda and probably part of a competition
for $$$. Being able to articulate the
value of art, whether it’s reading or writing, dance, music, or visual art of
any sort is an important part of keeping the ball rolling…this book will help
to justify the value of your work, enhance your confidence and lift your spirits.
