Modernism, Medicine and the Embodied Mind: Investigating Disorders of the Self

'Modernism, Medicine and the Embodied Mind' is an interdisciplinary network that will use the radical insights of aesthetic modernism to develop dialogue with medical practice in psychiatry, psychoanalytic psychotherapy, neurology, and the mental healthcare offered at the end of life. The project is dynamically interdisciplinary, fostering collaboration between researchers and clinicians working in Higher Education, the NHS, and international healthcare. It brings literary and arts scholars, philosophers, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, neuropsychologists, neurologists, research scientists, and doctors in palliative care and general practice into dialogue with theatre practitioners, dancers and artists from across the UK, Europe and the USA, asking them to explore together the resources modernism offers for creatively understanding experiences of body and mind poorly served by realist models of self.

The project will extend Barry, Maude and Salisbury's work exploring the historical and discursive links between literary modernism, medical discoveries, and clinical practice, by putting it into dialogue with the insights of visual artists and art historians, dancers and dance scholars, and contemporary scientists and clinicians. The benefits of this will be reciprocal. The humanities scholars and practitioners will be offered innovative vocabularies, concepts, and ethical research frames for their work, while scientific researchers and medical practitioners will gain new resources for contextualising and analysing the institutional, cultural and conceptual assumptions that inform current practice. Underpinning the project is the significance of phenomenology and the first-person experience of medicine, as explored in literature, theatre, dance, and the philosophy of medicine, and as applied to medical education and clinical care through innovative performance-based workshops and pedagogical interventions.

The Network's core team consists of Dr Ulrika Maude (Bristol; PI), Dr Elizabeth Barry (Warwick; Co-I) and Dr Laura Salisbury (Exeter; Co-I)-all scholars of literary modernism and medical humanities-and dancer and academic Dr Charlotta Palmstierna Einarsson (Stockholm), visual artist and academic Dr Deborah Robinson (Plymouth), NHS psychiatrist and philosopher of psychiatry Dr Matthew Broome (Oxford), and Theatre Research Fellow, Jonathan Heron (Director of Fail Better Productions). The international working group includes: researcher in the field of art and neuro-psychoanalysis Prof Lois Oppenheim (Montclair State); Hunter Groninger, geriatrics and palliative care MD (NIH, Washington); Sander Gilman, Professor of the Liberal Arts and Sciences and Professor of Psychiatry (Emory); Ronald Schleifer, Professor of English and Adjunct Professor in the College of Medicine (Oklahoma); philosopher Prof Catherine Malabou (Kingston), Femi Oyebode, Professor of Psychiatry (Birmingham) and modernism scholars Prof Dirk van Hulle (Antwerp), and Dr Peter Fifield (Birkbeck). The interdisciplinary project team and its intellectual and clinical goals speak to the key AHRC 'Science in Culture' initiative and also address the RCUK's research challenge of 'Lifelong Health and Well-being'.

The project will combine aesthetic criticism, which can attend to aesthetic form and engage in nuanced ways with questions of language, representation, subjectivity, and affect - with the archival emphases of cultural history and conceptual rigour of philosophy and critical theory, to explore modernism's specific ability to speak to seemingly unruly mental and embodied states, and the conceptual 'black hole' of extreme old age. It will use performance-as-research strategies to consider how theatre and dance might help scholars and clinicians understand these states via experiential means, and explore the role of the visual arts in communicating experiences that resist conceptual definition.

This research network will benefit scholars, artists and health practitioners in the UK, USA and Europe, and contribute to the development of new clinical initiatives to promote public health and wellbeing. The network will encompass a range of professionals in literary and arts studies, philosophy, psychiatry, neuropsychology, neurology, medicine, and in dance, visual arts and theatre practice. Its work will focus on intellectual, conceptual and ethical questions that inform medical education, particularly in relation to the treatment of complex chronic conditions that present challenges - psychological, ethical and ontological - to doctors and healthcare practitioners. Crucially, the network will also participate in the application of the research to clinical and professional settings.

The following users in the UK, US and Europe will particularly benefit from the building of a cohesive network of scholars and practitioners, and the enhanced capacity for intellectual, pedagogic, and clinical collaborations and interventions it will create. The network will be established, and the first fruits of its creation disseminated, through a series of workshops, an international conference, and a dedicated website.

STUDENT AND PRACTISING DOCTORS, CLINICIANS AND OTHER HEALTHCARE WORKERS in the fields of neurology, psychiatry and end-of-life mental healthcare in NHS and selected US settings (clinicians in these areas will be part of the network, which will allow the following collaborations in the fields of medical education):

1. The network will enable the lead investigators to build on work tested in the pilot project 'Beckett on the Wards' (Health Education Kent Surrey Sussex, 2012-13), which used pedagogic interventions devised by Jonathan Heron in collaboration with Barry, Maude and Salisbury to explore the challenges of geriatric and psychogeriatric care. Prof Zoe Playdon will offer specialist advice to members of the network on taking this work into medicine and clinical practice. The core group will work on offering Continuing Professional Development (CPD) workshops in geriatric and psychiatric care nationally not only through the investigators' medical schools and the institutions of the wider project group but also NHS Health Education England, the body responsible for the management and delivery of postgraduate medical education and continuing professional development of doctors nationwide.

2. The network will allow teaching collaborations between humanities faculties, medical schools and hospitals attached to the universities of Bristol, Coventry, Exeter, Warwick, Oklahoma (USA), Montclair State (USA), Virginia (USA), and National Institutes of Health (USA) through the network members. These will offer a model for future collaborations, and create teaching resources for performance-related workshops exploring disorders of self and their treatment. The phenomenological principles of the investigators' work provide the basis both for the conceptual scrutiny of psychiatric and medical concepts, and the development of experiential learning that explores the importance of the first-person experience of both patient and doctor to clinical practice.

3. The network will consolidate American contacts, and disseminate its work in an event at the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, initiating conversations about the role of narrative in conceptualizing and treating disorders of self, and exploring new interfaces between neurology and psychoanalysis.

THEATRE AND DANCE PROFESSIONALS interested in developing new work exploring psychiatric and neurological concerns through the opportunity to participate in interdisciplinary work in applied performance and medical pedagogy.

VISUAL ARTISTS who will participate in the network and create new work in collaboration with scholars and scientists exploring non-narrative approaches to disorders of self, as well as innovations in art therapy.