Poetry and Therapy: More Alike Than You Think

Poetry and Therapy: More Alike Than You Think
Owen Lewis, MD (Stockbridge)
Sarah Stemp, PhD (Alford)
Richard Berlin, MD (Richmond)

Description of the Event:
With overlapping concerns of creating meaning from what may be
meaningless, order out of what may be disordered, and a primary focus on
words and language as the vehicle, poetry and therapy are often more alike
than you think. Three local clinician/poets with diverse professional
backgrounds (psychiatry, child psychiatry, psychology, psychoanalysis)
will explore the overlap. Topics include the poetic processes in therapy
and therapeutic processes in poetry; confessional poetry and the
confession; client/clinician and poet/poem relationships, as well the
differences and pitfalls–both in themselves and their writing, with their
patients, and with their students.
Relevance of Topic:
As poets, we often say “poetry heals”, and readers and writers of poetry
often turn to poetry to be healed. Poets who are also clinicians and
teachers of writing are ideally suited to examine and articulate the
processes of therapy, the processes of writing poetry, the processes of
reading and reflecting on poetry, and where and when the aims of poetry
and the aims of therapy may collide.

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