Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Great Minds, Great Music


Richard Kogan is a psychiatrist who is also a Julliard-trained concert pianist. He does a series of captivating biographical presentations on the lives of composers, and punctuates his talks by stopping to play music by the composer that illustrates a given point. The presentations take a great deal of research, and they have a psychiatric bent-- all the composers Dr. Kogan chooses had colorful lives filled with tragedy, drama, complicated relationships and yes, psychiatric disorders. He notes, "It's hard enough to make a psychiatric diagnosis in my office with a live patient..." He's produced five such psychological perspectives on Schumann, Beethoven, Gershwin, Tchaikovsky, and most recently, Leonard Bernstein. I've heard four of them in the last six years (with my tone deaf ears); I think this makes me a groupie.


"I have a passion for the interface between my two professions of psychiatry and music, and I'm intrigued by the mysteries of the mind and the nature of the creative process." Kogan says.



Wanna listen?



So I'd like to throw Richard Kogan in a room with Oliver Sacks , the neurologist/author of
Musicophilia, Tales of Music and the Brain, and just sit and listen for a while.

4 comments:

Dragonfly said...

Sounds fascinating!

Anonymous said...

What's the point of making a diagnosis of a dead person? Isn't the point of diagnosing to help the person?

There's a part of psych- practices that seems very willing to insist on a specific diagnosis, sometimes despite the experience of the patient; there seems to be a sense that the "doctor always knows best." (Freud was especially guilty and public about his findings, so we all know, but it goes on.) So how can one make a useful diagnosis in the absence of the "patient"'s experience/response? (I put "patient" in quotation marks because the person clearly isn't in that relationship except in the psych-'s fantasy.)

NeoNurseChic said...

Very interesting. I'd pay good money to be in the room with both of them - being a science/music person myself, in particular neuro/music. :)

Sorry I haven't been hanging out on your blog as much lately. It's been a crazy few months, and my new fave hangout online is Twitter. :-P I finally had a day off today (been a very busy few weeks since I finally went back to work after my roller coaster of a ride with getting the stimulator and eventually losing the stimulator to a bad infection), and I decided to stop by and say hello!!

I was interviewed on Dr. Anonymous's Blog Talk Radio show a few weeks ago, and we did talk about music a bit, along with everything else, iffin you are interested!!

Hope you are well!
Carrie :)

NeoNurseChic said...

Nevermind there my telling you about my interview with Dr. A! I just scanned down more of your posts and found you called it "notable" from Emergiblog's Grand Rounds. Thank you. :) That was sweet!

It was a really fun interview (even more fun seeing the live chat room go on while you are talking - but Enrico from Mexico Med Student recorded a "movie" of the live chat while I was doing the interview so I could see later what people were saying).

Take care!
Carrie :)