Page 22 - WesternU View - Fall 2017
P. 22
W esternU President Daniel R. Wilson, MD, PhD, invited three renowned authors and
academic leaders – and decades-long friends and colleagues – to speak at his Presidential
Symposium on August 11, 2017. The symposium, “Health, Science and Humanism,” was
one of the premier events leading up to Wilson’s inauguration on August 12.
Kay Redfield Jamison, PhD, talked about “Healing the Mind” by examining the life and art of
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Robert Lowell. Jamison is a leading expert on manic-depressive (bipolar)
illness. She is the Dalio Family Professor in Mood Disorders, Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns
Hopkins University School of Medicine, and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Mood Disorders
Center. Her book Robert Lowell: Setting the River on Fire was published by Knopf earlier this year.
Lowell had great character and courage, but also had a severe form of what we now call biopolar
illness, Jamison said. “For Robert Lowell, his relentless psychotic attacks of mania ripped his life
apart and ripped apart the lives of everyone he knew.”
Psychotherapy helped, and lithium was essential. But only writing healed. Writing, he told a friend,
“takes the ache away.”
Lowell was hospitalized 20 times for acute psychotic mania before he was put on lithium. It kept
coming back, and he knew he had no control over it, Jamison said. Lowell found solace in writing,
which serves as a valuable lesson to encourage others to get back to whatever it is they love.
Symposium focuses on
humanism in medicine
By Jeff Keating and Rodney Tanaka
Photos by Jeff Malet
20
academic leaders – and decades-long friends and colleagues – to speak at his Presidential
Symposium on August 11, 2017. The symposium, “Health, Science and Humanism,” was
one of the premier events leading up to Wilson’s inauguration on August 12.
Kay Redfield Jamison, PhD, talked about “Healing the Mind” by examining the life and art of
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Robert Lowell. Jamison is a leading expert on manic-depressive (bipolar)
illness. She is the Dalio Family Professor in Mood Disorders, Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns
Hopkins University School of Medicine, and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Mood Disorders
Center. Her book Robert Lowell: Setting the River on Fire was published by Knopf earlier this year.
Lowell had great character and courage, but also had a severe form of what we now call biopolar
illness, Jamison said. “For Robert Lowell, his relentless psychotic attacks of mania ripped his life
apart and ripped apart the lives of everyone he knew.”
Psychotherapy helped, and lithium was essential. But only writing healed. Writing, he told a friend,
“takes the ache away.”
Lowell was hospitalized 20 times for acute psychotic mania before he was put on lithium. It kept
coming back, and he knew he had no control over it, Jamison said. Lowell found solace in writing,
which serves as a valuable lesson to encourage others to get back to whatever it is they love.
Symposium focuses on
humanism in medicine
By Jeff Keating and Rodney Tanaka
Photos by Jeff Malet
20
