This sylvan game - creative writing and GP wellbeing
Bradley Smith, S.
Australian Family Physician 37(6): 461-462
2008
ISSN/ISBN: 0300-8495 PMID: 18523702 Document Number: 617092
In Sebastian Faulks' novel, Human Traces, which explores the profession of psychiatry in its infancy, one of the ill and wealthy patients, who has retreated to an Austrian sanitarian, explains to his doctor that his sadness stems from the fact that 'at the age of 55 I have essentially ceased to be of interest to myself'. The doctor smiles, and says: 'I suppose you still have your painting... presumably that provides some consolation'. The patient responds with ferocity: 'I did not turn to art for consolation... I turned to it in the hope that I could use it to push back experience. I hoped that I could use it to reset reality'.