ARTISTS AND MENTAL ILLNESS
REVISED SYLLABUS
School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Summer 2006
Ann Starr
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WEEK ONE of three week course that meets daily for three hours

Background Reading:  Patricia D. Barry, Mental Health & Mental Illness, 6th edition. Chapter 15: Mental status exam; Chapter 24: Mood disorders; Chapter 23: Schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders.

1. (Introductions, course requirements, course goals and methods)
   
   Topic: Who are artists? Who are the mentally ill? How do we think we know?
   Discussion of icons and stereotypes; slides of artists’ self-portraits and of images of mentally ill people derived from clinical, advertising, and popular sources.
    
2. *Kay Redfield Jamison, Touched with Fire: selections from “That Fine Madness” and “Could it be Madness—This?”
   
   Topic: Design and conduct of scientific studies seeking to define the association between artistic process and mental illness
    
3. *Kay Redfield Jamison, Touched with Fire: selection from “Their Life a Storm Whereon They Ride,”
   *Roy Porter, A Social History of Madness, selection from “Madness and Genius”
   
   Topic: Historical context: Romanticism: Robert Schumann and William Blake
    
4. *Justice Potter Stewart, “Majority Opinion in O’Connor v. Donaldson,”
   *Nancy Andreasen (in Schildkraut and Otero, ed.), from “Creativity and Mental Illness…”
   *Randy Kennedy, “Man-Child in the Promised Land,” New York Times, 2/19/06
   
   Topic: A slippery slope? A sliding scale? Consequences of psychiatric diagnosis.
   Art of the mentally ill: Daniel Johnston, artists of the Prinzhorn Collection
    
5. *Alvin F. Pouissaint and Amy Alexander, selections from Lay My Burden Down.
   *Alvin F. Pouissaint, Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, 9/30/97, “News and Views: The Status of Blacks Teaching in Academic Psychology.”
   
   Topic: Cultural difference and mental health
   Films: Chris Rock, Bring the Pain; documentary, Sun Ra: A Joyful Noise

WEEK TWO

First paper due Monday:  For her next book on artists and madness, should Dr. Jamison continue to research artists of the past, or should she investigate contemporary artists? Give reasons for and against each group as a research population and make a recommendation to the investigator.

6. *Walter Reich: “Psychiatric Diagnosis as an Ethical Problem,” pages 205-218
   Topic: The uses, abuses, and the ethics of psychiatric diagnosis.
   FIELD TRIP to office of clinical psychologist Eliezer Margolis, PhD.
    

7. *CBS News and Charlie Rose, “A Beautiful Note”
   *Joseph Parisi interview with Tom Harrell: http://www.iaje.org/article.asp?ArticleID=186
   
   Topics: Schizophrenia and creativity
   Film: Nancy Andreasen, Negative symptoms in schizophrenia
   Music of Tom Harrell
    

8. *Jennifer Gonnerman, “Tuesdays with Judy,” The Village Voice, Jan 4-10, 2006.
   *Louise Farmer Smith, “Return to Lincoln,” Bellevue Literary Review 4(1): 2004.
   
   Topics: Art-making as therapy in mental illness; Art as response to mental illness; The community mental health gallery and the artist’s career.
   Virtual class visit from artist Adele Mattern
   Visiting artist: poet Sally Dawidoff
   Discussion: Autobiography and mental illness; the artist responds to mental illness around her
    

9. *Nasar, Sylvia, selections from A Beautiful Mind
   Topics: Schizophrenia and recovery;
   Video: interview with John Forbes Nash
    

10. *Solomon, Andrew, The Noonday Demon, selections from chapter 1
    Topic: Episodic and chronic illnesses. Narrating psychiatric experience.
    Visiting artist: Christa Donner

WEEK THREE

11. *Paprocki, Ray, “Portrait of a Methadone Man,” Columbus Monthly, April, 2004
    
    Topics: Making art under the influence of mind-altering substances and mental illness; effects of treatment on art-making
    Class visit from artist Tom Kennaugh
     

12. *Lauren Slater, selections from Prozac Diary;
    *Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon, from chapter 3,“Treatments,”
    *Nancy Andreasen, selections from The Creating Brain
    
    Topic: Treatments, medications, and the artist’s identity.
    In-class drawing; imagery of illness and healing
     

13. Student-teacher conferences; work on final project.
     

14. Final projects due (individually selected topics)
    *Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon, from chapter 10, “Politics.”
    * Kay Redfield Jamison, The Lancet, 2/11/06, “Many stigmas of mental illness,”
    
    Topic: Mental illness and career in art.
    Discussion of individual final projects. Recap: Who are artists? Who are the mentally ill? Looking beyond stereotypes.
     

15. Students form two groups to design improved curricula or textbooks for the next generation of class in Artists and Mental Illness. Each group presents its curriculum to the other, which recommends that its institution Adopt, Reject, or Adopt the new approach with modification.