TRANSCRIPTION 🔗
WEBVTT
00:00:35.169 --> 00:00:48.289
In conversation with Terry Shepard, award-winning broadcaster, narrator, and author, a deep dive into the writer's craft with the artists and support systems who create the stories we love.
00:00:48.609 --> 00:00:52.530
What if everyone around you insisted you were insane?
00:00:52.689 --> 00:00:57.409
Well, you became increasingly certain that someone was trying to kill you.
00:00:57.729 --> 00:01:00.049
That's the chilling question at the heart of Dr.
00:01:00.129 --> 00:01:14.129
Jess Wright's new novel, Dance in a Madhouse, a psychological thriller set at the dawn of modern psychiatric treatment when the boundaries between illness and imprisonment could be frighteningly thin.
00:01:14.449 --> 00:01:17.650
Jess brings extraordinary credentials to that world.
00:01:17.890 --> 00:01:32.370
He is a professor at the University of Louisville Medical School, an internationally recognized psychiatrist, and a pioneering researcher in cognitive behavior therapy, whose work on depression has been supported by the National Institutes of Health.
00:01:32.609 --> 00:01:41.329
He is also the award-winning author of the novel A Stream to Follow, which explored the psychological wounds carried home from war.
00:01:41.890 --> 00:01:55.090
In Dance in a Madhouse, we meet Owen confined inside Fairmount Lodge after typhoid fever, delirium, and a violent act leave doctors convinced that he is psychotic.
00:01:55.329 --> 00:02:05.730
But as his mind clears, Owen begins to wonder whether the greatest danger lies not within himself, but inside the institution holding him captive.
00:02:06.129 --> 00:02:06.450
Dr.
00:02:06.530 --> 00:02:08.050
Jess Wright, it's great to be with you.
00:02:08.209 --> 00:02:09.329
Welcome to the conversation.
00:02:09.569 --> 00:02:10.769
Thank you, Terry.
00:02:11.009 --> 00:02:12.610
A brilliant introduction there.
00:02:12.689 --> 00:02:13.969
I appreciate that.
00:02:14.689 --> 00:02:17.810
What made you write dance in the Madhouse?
00:02:18.129 --> 00:02:19.090
Oh boy.
00:02:19.250 --> 00:02:22.209
That's a long story I'm going to try to say in just a few words.
00:02:22.449 --> 00:02:27.810
I'm a psychiatrist by profession, and I've always enjoyed my work a whole lot.
00:02:27.969 --> 00:02:29.250
I still do it to some extent.
00:02:29.329 --> 00:02:37.409
I'm working about half time now, but I wanted to do something else in this part of my career and life cycle and life trajectory.
00:02:37.490 --> 00:02:45.409
And so I decided that, gee, I've had some success in writing medical things that are pretty staid, and I'd like to let my creative juices flow a bit.
00:02:45.650 --> 00:02:53.810
So I began to look around for some stories, and I came up with that story that ended up in the book, A Stream to Follow, which has done pretty well.
00:02:53.969 --> 00:02:58.210
And then I was looking for another story, and I one came to me from a friend of mine.
00:02:58.370 --> 00:02:59.329
That's just by chance.
00:02:59.490 --> 00:03:06.530
I don't know if this happens much to other authors, but a friend of mine's actually a very fine poet that's published a lot.
00:03:06.689 --> 00:03:10.129
And she said, Jess, would you write an introduction to my next book of poetry?
00:03:10.210 --> 00:03:13.810
And I said, me write an introduction to a book of poetry.
00:03:13.889 --> 00:03:15.490
That's pretty far stretch.
00:03:15.969 --> 00:03:18.050
And then she gave me the premise.
00:03:18.129 --> 00:03:29.090
And the premise was that she had discovered some letters from her great-grandfather, I believe it was, who was a brother of William Howard Taft, the former president of the United States.
00:03:29.250 --> 00:03:32.370
And she found that these letters were just heartbreaking.
00:03:32.530 --> 00:03:43.729
And they were from Peter Taft, who was deep-sixed, if you will, in a mental institution after he had some kind of a psychotic reaction with typhoid fever, and he was kept there.
00:03:43.969 --> 00:03:47.729
And her premise was that he was kept there because of the stigma.
00:03:47.810 --> 00:03:53.409
I just couldn't have a family member that was out in public that was potentially even psychotic at that time.
00:03:53.490 --> 00:03:57.810
So he was kept in an institution, and eventually his outcome was pretty tragic.
00:03:57.969 --> 00:04:01.650
But I thought this is a story that you could be told, you needed to tell in a different way.
00:04:01.810 --> 00:04:05.409
So I came up with this idea for the book Dance in a Madhouse.
00:04:05.490 --> 00:04:25.009
And I got the title from the lithograph by a famous American painter, George Bellows, who has a lithograph that's in the Museum of Modern Art, excuse me, the Metropolitan Museum of Modern, not Moderate Art, and other museums, and it depicts something called a lunatic ball, which is a terrible word to say, even for a psychiatrist.
00:04:25.090 --> 00:04:27.329
And I shouldn't even say those words, lunatic.
00:04:27.490 --> 00:04:29.889
But that's the words that were used back in those days.
00:04:30.129 --> 00:04:40.610
And what happened was that they would have a dance, if you will, for the inmates at these mental institutions, people that stayed there for months or years or their whole life.
00:04:40.769 --> 00:04:50.129
And then the townspeople could, I think, pay to get into see them and clock at them, having this dance, and have a good time of it all.
00:04:50.289 --> 00:04:55.649
And to me, this was like the uh quintessential example of extreme stigma.
00:04:55.810 --> 00:04:59.009
And I thought that that's probably a title I could use.
00:04:59.170 --> 00:05:03.889
And then part of me thought, I'm a psychiatrist, should I even title a book, Dance in a Madhouse?
00:05:03.969 --> 00:05:04.610
It's terrible.
00:05:04.689 --> 00:05:07.009
My colleagues will never want to speak to me again.
00:05:07.329 --> 00:05:17.490
So I ran it by some friends and other people, uh, my consultants,
Load full transcript
people I work with, and a few others, and they said, gee, you ought to use that title because it is unique in it.
00:05:17.649 --> 00:05:18.529
So that's what I did.
00:05:18.689 --> 00:05:22.209
So that's where the title and the book idea came from.
00:05:23.089 --> 00:05:29.730
What was happening in that early time in psychiatry, which made such fertile ground for this thriller?
00:05:30.529 --> 00:05:48.529
This was a time actually before Freud, which takes people back a while, but there were other experts at that time who were just flirting with the science of psychiatry, with hypnosis, with psychoanalysis in a sort of trying to understand the human mind.
00:05:48.930 --> 00:05:53.810
And so there's a rich history of psychiatry, and I was able to draw on that and weave that into the book.
00:05:53.969 --> 00:06:00.050
So there are real psychiatrists that were alive at that time that do appear in the book and that play a major role.
00:06:00.209 --> 00:06:16.370
So it's based to some extent on a true story of Peter Taff's life, and it's based to some extent on true stories of the history of psychiatry, but it's a fictional account of a big adventure in a mental institution at the turn of the century, the turn of the last century.
00:06:16.850 --> 00:06:17.170
Dr.
00:06:17.329 --> 00:06:18.689
Jess Wright is our special guest.
00:06:18.769 --> 00:06:21.889
We're talking about his new thriller Dancing in a Madhouse.
00:06:22.050 --> 00:06:27.250
His website is just right, W-R-I-G-H-T, just rightmd.com.
00:06:27.730 --> 00:06:34.129
One of the most compelling questions I found with the book is whether Owen can trust his own mind.
00:06:34.529 --> 00:06:40.209
How do you create that kind of uncertainty for the reader without making the story feel manipulative?
00:06:40.610 --> 00:06:42.689
That was a bit of the challenge here.
00:06:42.930 --> 00:07:02.689
I would make an observation that I think there are many people that have never been diagnosed with a psychiatric illness, never seen the inside of a psychiatrist's office or a telemedicine visit, who wonder about whether they're all put together in a hundred percent way, and may even have experienced things like paranoia.
00:07:03.009 --> 00:07:15.170
I don't know if you've ever had that, Terry, when you've been sleep deprived or you've had a lot of stress on you or something, and your mind begins to come apart a little bit, and you wonder could people be talking about me?
00:07:15.410 --> 00:07:19.410
Is somebody you know trying to do something to make life bad for me?
00:07:19.569 --> 00:07:21.730
And then maybe sometimes it's actually true.
00:07:21.969 --> 00:07:30.529
There was a study done in England a few years back that found that I think it was well over 50% of the people had experienced some kind of paranoia.
00:07:30.930 --> 00:07:40.610
So the idea of where sanity stops and madness or psychiatric illness begins is sometimes hard to figure out.
00:07:40.769 --> 00:07:53.889
And even in my clinical work, I've been doing this for decades, as I'm sometimes not sure when someone comes in and talks about some where some fear that they have or something that sounds on the surface to be delusional, whether it actually could be true.
00:07:55.170 --> 00:07:55.569
Yeah.
00:07:56.209 --> 00:08:11.969
I tried to paint this these characters, not just Owen, the main character, but some of the other characters as sympathetic characters, people that were very observant and together, if you will, but had some kind of a quirk or a problem that landed them in that institution.
00:08:12.129 --> 00:08:22.449
But really quite fine people, deep humanity, and ability to ascribe their dilemmas in ways that it would I think make the reader be very interested in their character.
00:08:23.009 --> 00:08:26.769
What made you decide on psychiatry as your medical specialty?
00:08:28.050 --> 00:08:36.610
I'm a liberal arts graduate, a guy that came out of a small liberal arts college, and I did theater when I was there.
00:08:36.769 --> 00:08:41.569
I sang in the choir, I studied art history, and I loved all that stuff.
00:08:41.809 --> 00:08:47.089
Yet I was a pre-med major, and I got into med school by some miracle because I was doing all this other stuff.
00:08:47.250 --> 00:08:58.690
And then when I got into med school and I realized that you had to really grind and grind to be really great at doing something like cardiology or internal medicine, which was what I initially wanted to do.
00:08:58.850 --> 00:09:08.210
I think that the call of the liberal arts came back to me, and integrating arts and sciences is much easier done than psychiatry than any other medical profession.
00:09:08.369 --> 00:09:11.809
So I think that's the main reason why I ended up doing that.
00:09:11.970 --> 00:09:13.250
And I'm glad I did.
00:09:13.569 --> 00:09:19.410
When I chose to be a psychiatrist, it was a while back, my family thought I was like going over the bend myself.
00:09:19.490 --> 00:09:29.410
Because why would you become a psychiatrist after you've borrowed all this money to go to medical school and you're here, you're on the cusp of doing whatever you'd like to do, and now you're going to be a psychiatrist?
00:09:29.569 --> 00:09:38.210
So anyway, I did it, and I'm sure glad I did because it's been a very rich and then interesting and adventuresome life that I'm still doing.
00:09:38.529 --> 00:09:43.970
And I hope that some of this I'm able to weave into my fiction writing.
00:09:44.130 --> 00:09:48.210
That because I've talked to lots of people, listened to lots of stories, as you might imagine.
00:09:48.369 --> 00:09:57.009
So I think I have maybe an ear or an eye for character that gives me some kind of perspective on that the average author might not have.
00:09:57.490 --> 00:10:03.650
How do you balance the elements of psychiatric drama with the mechanics of mystery in a thriller?
00:10:05.410 --> 00:10:20.289
This is probably unusual, but I carry over
some of my work in medical writing because I you know for that you have to outline it, you have to do a lot of research for it, you have to know what the literature says, what the references could be, and plot it out pretty carefully.
00:10:20.529 --> 00:10:29.809
And I do that to some extent for my fiction writing, but then when I get into it, I let my creative juices flow and let it go loose and see what happens.
00:10:30.130 --> 00:10:38.690
And so I might have some scripted out things that I think are gonna occur and have to occur because they all have to come together in some way toward the end of the book.
00:10:38.930 --> 00:10:40.289
But I want to see what happens.
00:10:40.369 --> 00:10:45.970
And sometimes I'm not quite sure what's gonna happen to various characters and how the end might even turn out.
00:10:46.130 --> 00:10:52.210
Is some gonna somebody gonna live or die, or fall in love or not fall in love, or get into trouble or not get into trouble?
00:10:52.369 --> 00:10:55.490
And I see where my muse takes me.
00:10:55.730 --> 00:10:57.730
And I hope it works out.
00:10:58.130 --> 00:10:59.490
I'm enjoying doing it.
00:10:59.650 --> 00:11:03.170
I must say that it's more fun by far than medical writing.
00:11:03.809 --> 00:11:06.930
Dance in a Madhouse is the book we're talking about with its author, Dr.
00:11:07.009 --> 00:11:07.569
Jess Wright.
00:11:07.730 --> 00:11:10.369
JessWrightMD.com is his website.
00:11:10.529 --> 00:11:17.329
One of my favorite characters in the story was Inspector Brumba, who becomes Owen's connection with the outside world.
00:11:17.569 --> 00:11:24.369
What interested you about pairing a confined psychiatric patient with a skeptical police investigator?
00:11:25.089 --> 00:11:27.970
I wanted to try to create an interesting detective.
00:11:28.049 --> 00:11:32.210
And since I'm from Pennsylvania, I latched on to this Broombaugh guy.
00:11:32.369 --> 00:11:42.130
He has a Pennsylvania Dutch name, and he has a Pennsylvania Dutch family background, and tried to set him up as somebody who would be somewhat unique.
00:11:42.450 --> 00:11:53.809
And you have to figure out the answers to these crimes that are going on in this hospital, and so we have to bring in an inspector, and I thought that they too could the two of them could become a good pair eventually.
00:11:53.970 --> 00:12:07.009
Although in the beginning, Owen is a suspect for all the things that are happening in this institution, and he's a new guy, and there are bad things that are happening, and sure, he did bad things before he got into the hospital under the curse of typhoid.
00:12:07.329 --> 00:12:16.690
But Broombaugh eventually figures out that this guy is pretty sharp and he can use him for his own purposes, and they have a shared agenda by the end of the book.
00:12:16.930 --> 00:12:19.890
And then they become a pair in my next book as a sequel.
00:12:20.849 --> 00:12:24.130
Celeste is also a very intriguing character.
00:12:24.289 -->
00:12:25.809
She's an opera singer.
00:12:26.049 --> 00:12:31.890
She survived tremendous emotional pain, and she carries clues to the larger mystery.
00:12:32.210 --> 00:12:33.490
Where did she come from?
00:12:35.170 --> 00:12:45.890
I created Celeste a long time before this recent news item about the woman who was on trial for the murder of her three children after a postpartum psychosis.
00:12:46.769 --> 00:12:54.769
But I had experience in working with women who've had postpartum psychotic episodes and who some bad things had happened.
00:12:55.250 --> 00:13:05.730
And was able to help, if you will, rehabilitate them and get them back with their children even after there had been abuse that occurred in the face of a psychosis.
00:13:06.210 --> 00:13:10.690
And the those experiences were very emotionally touching to me.
00:13:11.170 --> 00:13:17.650
this to see a mother who really loved her child become psychotic and believe that the child's the devil.
00:13:18.210 --> 00:13:19.970
Terrible kind of experience.
00:13:20.769 --> 00:13:25.569
And so I pulled from those experiences to create this cre this character of Celeste.
00:13:26.049 --> 00:13:35.730
And since I've had experience in studying voice, and and I've never been an opera singer, but I've been a lot of singing through the years, and so I brought that in to some extent to try to share that.
00:13:35.970 --> 00:13:39.809
And I thought that she could be a very interesting and puzzling character.
00:13:39.970 --> 00:13:44.289
So she does, in the beginning, talk in ways that are very hard to discern.
00:13:44.690 --> 00:13:52.130
Owen has to try to figure this out, but she does know a lot, and she helps him solve some of these things by the end of the book.
00:13:52.930 --> 00:13:53.250
Dr.
00:13:53.410 --> 00:13:54.769
Jess Wright is our special guest.
00:13:54.849 --> 00:13:56.609
We're talking about dance in a madhouse.
00:13:56.690 --> 00:13:57.569
It's a great read.
00:13:57.650 --> 00:14:00.289
You can learn about it at JessWrightMD.com.
00:14:00.450 --> 00:14:03.970
We live in a world right now that's very judgmental.
00:14:04.690 --> 00:14:13.809
And the question I love to ask people like you is how do we get away from this cancel culture and find our empathy?
00:14:15.250 --> 00:14:33.650
We certainly live in an era when I have so many of my patients that don't even want to watch the news on TV or read the newspaper or stay in touch with anything that could get online about the current news cycle because it seems like bad, malignant sometimes news.
00:14:33.970 --> 00:14:37.089
And we live in a polarized culture in the United States.
00:14:37.329 --> 00:14:49.890
In fact, in the world, what's going on in France, in Europe, far right and far left, an article I read I still read the newspaper, by the way, or in the New York Times yesterday was about the the center in in Europe is dying.
00:14:50.049 --> 00:14:53.490
There's nothing much left of it because it's all gone to the polarized sides.
00:14:53.569 --> 00:15:01.970
And that's something I really try to fight every day in my clinical work because my patients have that proclivity to do that in their own mind.
00:15:02.130 --> 00:15:07.170
Either they're all, either they've had a big success in their life or they've been a complete failure.
00:15:07.410 --> 00:15:12.690
And in truth, as we know, so much of life is in between.
00:15:12.849 --> 00:15:16.210
We have our times that things work out and times that they certainly don't.
00:15:16.289 --> 00:15:26.609
And I try to help people see their strengths and make the most of them and try to understand some of their weaknesses and bad things that have happened and try to work through those.
00:15:26.769 --> 00:15:29.569
So that's what I do on a one-to-one basis.
00:15:29.730 --> 00:15:32.130
But trying to help them with empathy.
00:15:33.009 --> 00:15:42.690
There are some therapies that encourage empathy training, and to some extent, this treatment that I specialize in and teach a lot about cognitive behavior therapy really does that.
00:15:42.930 --> 00:15:47.250
It helps people understand the stream of thoughts that pour through their mind.
00:15:47.490 --> 00:15:51.730
In cognitive therapy, we call those automatic thoughts because they occur autonomously.
00:15:51.970 --> 00:15:53.569
Just roll through your mind all day long.
00:15:53.890 --> 00:15:57.170
Think about how many thoughts do you have all in a 24-hour period?
00:15:57.329 --> 00:15:59.089
Thousands, maybe more.
00:15:59.329 --> 00:16:01.490
And they affect how you feel, your emotions.
00:16:01.569 --> 00:16:23.809
And if you have thoughts that are strident and absolute black and white thoughts, magnified thoughts, then your emotions tend to also be extremely strong and often full of emotions like anger and depression and anxiety instead of joy and happiness.
00:16:23.970 --> 00:16:36.529
And so learning to listen into your thought pattern and begin to question it and modify it with some techniques that we can teach can really make a difference in one sense of well-being.
00:16:36.769 --> 00:16:38.609
So that's one way that we can do it.
00:16:38.769 --> 00:16:44.690
There's another, if you don't mind me, just taking one more minute or two, I'll tell you about another kind of therapy that I think is really worthwhile.
00:16:44.769 --> 00:16:46.369
It's not there's not much known about it.
00:16:46.450 --> 00:16:48.529
It's called well-being therapy.
00:16:48.769 --> 00:16:55.650
And the idea on this is to try to teach people ways to stimulate a sense of well-being in their lives.
00:16:55.890 --> 00:17:00.849
And it can be very useful even in the face of all kinds of difficult situations.
00:17:01.170 --> 00:17:05.730
For example, somebody that has chronic pain, like I do, I actually have chronic pain.
00:17:05.890 --> 00:17:08.609
I've had a bunch of fractures in my spine and things like that.
00:17:08.849 --> 00:17:10.930
And I use my own techniques
on myself.
00:17:11.170 --> 00:17:11.329
Dr.
00:17:11.490 --> 00:17:12.289
Heal yourself.
00:17:12.450 --> 00:17:14.289
So I use some of this well-being therapy.
00:17:14.450 --> 00:17:32.289
In a well-being therapy, we go back to the teachings of Seneca from like 2,000 years ago, who advise us to keep a diary or some kind of a log of anything in our days that gave us a sense of well-being that we could savor and hang on to and learn how to burnish that sense of well-being.
00:17:32.369 --> 00:17:36.049
So that's one thing that we can teach in this sort of therapy.
00:17:36.289 --> 00:17:48.450
If you wanted to look at my one of my self-help books called Breaking Free from Depression, there's a whole chapter in there on how to use self-help techniques to work on your sense of well-being.
00:17:48.610 --> 00:17:50.289
And that helps with empathy too.
00:17:50.690 --> 00:17:58.049
I think if you have a sense of well-being and a meaningful, purposeful existence, that you tend to be more empathic for other people.
00:17:59.730 --> 00:18:05.250
Did writing fiction teach you anything about human resilience that uh clinical research can't?
00:18:07.490 --> 00:18:11.009
It's interesting that I think I've created some resilient characters.
00:18:11.250 --> 00:18:19.809
Certainly in dancing and that house, both Owen and Celeste are resilient because they both faced really tough kinds of things in life.
00:18:20.130 --> 00:18:25.970
So I guess that's something that I want to instill in readers and myself and the patients that I work with.
00:18:26.210 --> 00:18:31.250
But whether I find anything different in my fiction writing or not, I'm not quite sure.
00:18:31.490 --> 00:18:32.930
Perhaps I'll have to think about that.
00:18:33.009 --> 00:18:37.970
And I'll, as I continue to write, I'll take the question from Terry and see if that helps me in my writing.
00:18:38.049 --> 00:18:39.410
So thank you, Terry.
00:18:40.289 --> 00:18:42.450
How did you research those early years?
00:18:42.529 --> 00:18:44.930
Where did you find out about Fairmont Lodge?
00:18:45.330 --> 00:18:47.330
Fairmont Lodge is a made-up name.
00:18:47.490 --> 00:18:51.570
It comes from Fairmont Park in Philadelphia, where I was a medical student.
00:18:51.809 --> 00:18:57.809
But I knew a fair amount about this area, this era of psychiatry just because of my training.
00:18:57.890 --> 00:18:59.730
And we learn about the history of psychiatry.
00:18:59.809 --> 00:19:01.490
I've read books about the history of psychiatry.
00:19:01.650 --> 00:19:09.570
But I did do other reading, read about the famous French psychiatrist Pierre Jeannet, who was the progenator of hypnosis.
00:19:09.809 --> 00:19:12.370
I had courses on how to hypnotize.
00:19:12.610 --> 00:19:15.490
And I practiced hypnosis early in my career.
00:19:15.570 --> 00:19:19.970
I don't use it anymore, because I think there are better techniques now than the hypnosis.
00:19:20.130 --> 00:19:22.289
But I was able to put that into the book too.
00:19:22.529 --> 00:19:27.330
There are several hip scenes of hypnosis, including a couple that go awry.
00:19:28.769 --> 00:19:32.930
What do you hope people will take away from their encounter with dancing in a madhouse?
00:19:34.130 --> 00:19:40.610
Oh, I hope they'll enjoy it and find it uh adventuresome, thrilling to some extent read.
00:19:40.769 --> 00:19:45.490
It's not one of those thrillers where every minute you're hanging on the edge of the cliff with your fingernails.
00:19:45.650 --> 00:19:52.289
I didn't want to do that kind of a thing, but I didn't want people to get into it, have a sense of suspense, want to turn the pages.
00:19:52.610 --> 00:20:03.330
Whether they're going to learn anything profound that's going to they're going to take with them the rest of their lives, I'm not quite sure, but I'm not quite that pompous about what I might try to pull off with this.
00:20:03.490 --> 00:20:18.210
But I would hope that they would have respect for people who suffer from conditions like schizophrenia, catatonia, bipolar disorder, and realize through the characters that these are real people just like the rest of us.
00:20:18.370 --> 00:20:27.490
They just have an illness like some of us have diabetes, some of us have high blood pressure, some of us have multiple sclerosis, and it's really not our faults.
00:20:27.570 --> 00:20:32.529
And it's usually not even our parents' fault, even though we tend to blame parents and so forth for the way things turn out.
00:20:32.690 --> 00:20:43.970
A lot of it's the luck of the draw, and that the way people face up to these things, the resilience they show, the courage they show, the humanity they show, can mean a whole lot in in our life.
00:20:44.130 --> 00:20:52.690
So if they take that out of that and have a sense that they too can face some of these obstacles and overcome them, then I think that would have been a good outcome.
00:20:53.330 --> 00:21:00.610
One of my favorite mantras is that we all are carrying some sort of pain or burden that nobody else sees.
00:21:00.930 --> 00:21:05.970
How can we as human beings be more sensitive to that and more helpful?
00:21:07.570 --> 00:21:16.850
Listen to other people get to really know them instead of assuming get to know more people.
00:21:17.890 --> 00:21:37.809
Try to break through your pattern of loneliness or isolation, join a choir, be in a singing group, play mahjong with people, whatever take a cooking class, meet some people, try to understand all their perspectives, their different cultural beliefs, and and then learn from that.
00:21:38.289 --> 00:21:47.009
Instead of trying staying in your insular way of seeing the world, just has to be in a certain way that you've constructed it or you've been told the world the way the world should be.
00:21:47.970 --> 00:21:49.250
What's next?
00:21:49.970 --> 00:21:51.650
I'm working on a memoir.
00:21:52.690 --> 00:21:54.450
Which I had was very skeptical about.
00:21:54.610 -->
00:21:57.650
Could a psychiatrist write a memoir about being a psychiatrist?
00:21:58.049 --> 00:22:01.490
Because I certain above all I have to protect patient confidentiality.
00:22:01.730 --> 00:22:05.490
And my wife, who's also a writer, was very encouraging.
00:22:05.650 --> 00:22:15.009
She says, Jess, how many psychiatrists like to write or have done a bit of it, and have had as many adventures as you've had in this life and as a psychiatrist?
00:22:15.090 --> 00:22:16.450
And he said, You should do this.
00:22:16.610 --> 00:22:18.210
And I said, I can't do that.
00:22:18.370 --> 00:22:21.809
And so I for 20 years I said no and I've done other things.
00:22:21.890 --> 00:22:28.289
And then I read this book by Henry Marsh, he's a British neurosurgeon called Do No Harm, which I highly recommend.
00:22:28.370 --> 00:22:35.090
It's just a beautifully written book about his experiences doing neurosurgery in Britain.
00:22:35.330 --> 00:22:38.130
The chapter titles aren't very enticing.
00:22:38.210 --> 00:22:41.009
They're things like meningioma or astrocytoma.
00:22:41.490 --> 00:22:44.850
But in those, there's so much humanity and humility, by the way.
00:22:44.930 --> 00:22:49.410
He talks about his failures and the things that went wrong and the way he felt about it.
00:22:49.490 --> 00:22:51.170
And I was really inspired.
00:22:51.330 --> 00:22:56.930
And by the end of the book, I thought, gee, he must be writing about real cases because these things are so alive.
00:22:57.090 --> 00:22:59.330
And then I read the author's note, and they were real.
00:22:59.410 --> 00:23:02.930
He'd actually done this kind of work, but he'd masked all the identities.
00:23:03.410 --> 00:23:06.610
If I really worked hard at this, I think I maybe could mask identities.
00:23:06.769 --> 00:23:10.130
And I so I've my author's note at the beginning of the book instead of the end.
00:23:10.210 --> 00:23:12.210
I say, okay, here's what I'm doing here.
00:23:12.370 --> 00:23:13.890
I'm masking identities.
00:23:14.049 --> 00:23:21.970
These are these cases may be from different periods of time, genders, backgrounds, and but I'm and they might be amalgams.
00:23:22.289 --> 00:23:24.610
But these are experiences like the ones I've actually had.
00:23:24.690 --> 00:23:25.809
So that's the way I've done it.
00:23:25.970 --> 00:23:28.130
So now I'm about two-thirds of the way through it.
00:23:28.370 --> 00:23:29.730
So I'm enjoying that too.
00:23:29.809 --> 00:23:32.850
It's that's more of a challenge than anything I've written, by the way.
00:23:33.250 --> 00:23:38.690
The book is Dance in the Madhouse, a fantastic read by our special guest, Dr.
00:23:38.769 --> 00:23:42.289
Jess Wright, J-E-S-S-W-R-I-G-H-T-M-D.
00:23:42.450 --> 00:23:44.690
JessRightmd.com is the website.
00:23:44.850 --> 00:23:46.049
This has been wonderful, Jess.
00:23:46.130 --> 00:23:47.170
Thanks so much for the conversation.
00:23:47.410 --> 00:23:48.049
Thank you, Terry.
00:23:48.130 --> 00:23:49.570
I love speaking with you.
00:23:49.890 --> 00:23:54.210
In Conversation with Terry Shefford is a copyrighted presentation.
00:23:54.450 --> 00:23:55.890
All rights reserved.
00:23:55.970 --> 00:23:57.330
I'm Lisa Davis.
00:23:57.490 --> 00:24:00.769
Join Terry Shefford next time in conversation.