Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Psychiatry Psycology

  • Compassion failure, schadenfreude, and the fall of Icarus

    Sylvia R. KarasuNew York, United States “About suffering they were never wrong / The Old Masters…how it takes place / While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.”1 So wrote W.H. Auden in his poem Musée des Beaux Arts in response to his viewing the painting Landscape with the…

  • Alden Nowlan, the schizotypal poet

    Shane NeilsonHamilton, Ontario, Canada I suspect a psychiatrist would have pronounced me a victim of dementia praecox or some such thing.1—Alden Nowlan Applying a psychiatric diagnosis to the dead is a mug’s game. Alden Albert Nowlan (1933–1983), the critically acclaimed Canadian poet, novelist, and playwright, might agree, if one considered the bitter evidence of his…