This is the fourth in a series of profiles called "Ink-Stained for Life."
Imagine if your psychiatrist played concert piano, including the works of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Schumann, Gershwin and Mozart? Meet Dr. Richard Kogan, a Juilliard-trained pianist who went on to Harvard College and Medical School, trained in psychiatry at New York University Medical School, and now practices psychiatry as a faculty member of the Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City.
I met Dr. Kogan at one of his extraordinary performances, which he gives some 50 times a year around the world. At this one, instead of simply playing a piano concerto with orchestra, he told a story about a famous composer who suffered with mental problems -- frequent among highly creative people -- while illustrating the composer's work by exquisitely playing excerpts from his compositions. That evening, Dr. Kogan told the story of the 19th-century Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, whom we know for "Swan Lake," "The Nutcracker," "The 1812 Overture" and "Sleeping Beauty," among many other extraordinary creations. In the video below, Dr. Kogan recounts Tchaikovsky's story as a chronic, severe depressive and homosexual, both deeply anathema to cultural acceptance in his time. As he plays some of Tchaikovsky's music, we see how the composer struggled with his mood disorder and tried to hide his sexuality, succumbing to both in what possibly was suicide, while still at a creative peak, at the age of 53. Kogan's performances also recount the lives and music of Gershwin, Schumann, Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, Rachmaninoff and Leonard Bernstein.
Dr. Kogan's musical and medical career has had a very unusual trajectory. A gifted young musician, he studied at Juilliard, the renowned conservatory in Lincoln Center in New York City, before going to Harvard College, where he moved between music and premedical studies and roomed with Yo Yo Ma, the famed cellist, playing as part of a trio with him and violinist Lynn Chang. Kogan, Chang and Ma remain friends today. When it came time to decide where life would take him after college, Kogan never doubted going to medical school. He remarked to me that Apollo was the Greek god of medicine and music, and shamans have long had one foot in healing and one in the charms of music. In other words, there's no need to choose between them, because both can be possible. When it came time to select what specialty he would train in after medical school, there, too, he had no doubt. He smiled and said that the more those in hematology or endocrinology said they offered what medicine was really all about, the more he knew he wanted to be a psychiatrist.
About 10 years ago, Dr. Kogan was asked to do a symposium at the American Psychiatric Association on mental illness and musical creativity. That launched his career as a raconteur. While some psychiatrists and some musicians "bristled" at his stepping out of each profession's traditional format, with doctors asking, "Where are your PowerPoint slides?" and musicians insisting that he stop talking and just play music, it was a "revelation" for him: he knew he had found yet another calling. Now he believes that exploring the psyches of composers makes him a better interpreter of their scores, and that understanding the role of music in our lives makes him a better psychiatrist.
There is no piano in Dr. Kogan's office, nor does he treat only musicians and artists. He explains, "My job is to help people reach their creative peak," which clearly means more than music and the arts. I did not think to ask him whether he treats any Wall Street hedge fund executives.
When I asked Dr. Kogan who his musical heroes are, he said, without hesitation, that they are Beethoven and Mozart. As he elaborated, I realized that it was their resilience and endurance that made them his heroes, not (only) their music. Beethoven became deaf and transcended that seemingly unimaginable obstacle to produce ethereal music. Mozart, a wunderkind, a child prodigy beyond imagination, stayed on the creative road and became a mature master of music composition. Dr. Kogan smiled and said, "You can almost make the case for considering Mozart a 'late bloomer.'" I suppose we see the psychiatrist in Kogan speaking as his heroes are those who overcame adversity, who endured and mastered far more than ordinary challenges.
When I asked Dr. Kogan what else matters to him, he said that it is trying to destigmatize mental disorders. If geniuses can have a mental illness, then maybe mental illness is not shameful, especially if a mental disorder is part of the creative and inspirational process, he added.
Music and medicine remain inseparable for Dr. Kogan -- in his concerts and psychiatric practice. In his latest endeavor as Artistic Director of the Weill Cornell Music and Medicine Program, a position he took on last year, he proudly remarks that he has the opportunity to enable medical students and doctors, much like he has had, to live a life where neither need be left behind.
Always aspiring for himself what he wants to achieve with his patients, Dr. Kogan continues to expand himself, his music and his medicine. "I want to help humanize medicine, to bring more of the person into medical and psychiatric practice," he declared. With all of us concerned about medicine losing the patient while treating the laboratory and imaging results, it is a good thing we have doctors like Richard Kogan who open our ears and eyes to the symphony that is humanity, in his case played by an ensemble of music and medicine.
Dr. Kogan can be reached at richardkogan@aol.com.
The opinions expressed herein are solely those of Dr. Sederer, as a psychiatrist and public health advocate.
Dr. Sederer receives no support from any pharmaceutical or device company.
Visit Dr. Sederer's website, www.askdrlloyd.com, for questions you want answered, reviews and stories.
Other "Ink-Stained for Life" profiles:
"Ink-Stained for Life" (NYT-International Herald Tribune, Dec. 24, 2010; p. 7)
"Ink-Stained for Life: What Makes for a Great Teacher" (The Huffington Post, Feb. 26, 2011)
"Psychoanalysis: Journeying into Therapy" (The Huffington Post, March 28, 2011)
Beethoven and Mozart needed holistic nutrition ; less meat more fruits and vegetables , more vitamin c and antioxidents
e.g. a study using people who had been deprived of food at age 2-3 during WW2 showed a higher incident of schizophrenia
well mind association of washington also beleives mental illness is from lack of proper nutrition and can be managed with nutritional supplementation
R.D. Laing viewed schizophrenia as, "A sane response to an insane world." It occurs in people who are genetically predisposed. Environment can also be a factor. I would agree that children who are malnourished due to neglect, abuse and/or poverty may experience nutritional deficiencies and the combination could well result in mental health issues. However, to suggest that schizophrenia can/could have been cured by "holistic nutrition", is absurd.
Music helped me survive an otherwise horrific childhood. Bravo to Dr. Kogan for making the correlation between music and mental illness.
i havnt heard of a replication ; maybe the doctor can ask for funding for such studies
and also compare to children listening to Rockn'pop
ironically Rockmusic is not about rocks
right at this moment i'm listening on the internet to a ORF station playing folk music from a land in austria surveying a new song book being used in schools and taught by 2300 teachers it said just that one land , Lower Austria, one of 8 or 9 lands [ states ] has 1500 song groups and folk
bands
Brahms said about south austria , probably Kaernten [ carinthia ]maybe south Tirol , there are so many melodies you have to be careful not to step on one
Of course, for the younger generation, it's heavy metal that provides catharsis. After a break-up, my son stopped mucking about with his guitar and actually learned a few emotionally intense pieces quite well. :-)