บทถอดความฉบับเต็มของ Jess Wright - Dance in a Madhouse

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.