27.4 THERE'S NOTHING FUNNY ABOUT CHILD AND ADOLESCENT PSYCHIATRY: VISUAL HUMOR AND ITS USES IN CHILD AND ADOLESCENT PSYCHIATRY

Objectives: Dr. Stuart Copans will next address "There's Nothing Funny About Child Psychiatry: Visual Humor and Its Uses in Child Psychiatry." Methods: Most of us, when we think of the medical illustrations that have helped us get through medical school, think of Gray's Anatomy, Frank Netter, or perhaps the giant diagram of the Kreb's cycle that we put on our walls in hopes that it would help us memorize it; however, illustrations can serve many other purposes. They can portray not only anatomical structures but emotions, relationships, and defenses as well. They also can illustrate what is frustrating about medicine and help us laugh at our mistakes. Cartoons, which everyone in this audience can create if they can draw a stick figure and a word balloon, can be used to help patients tell their history and help children learn how to interact with other people. Winnicott's squiggle game, an interactive game of projective cartoons, almost always succeeds in engaging resistant or nonverbal patients. Results: My active sketching began in medical school because of a girlfriend who always carried a sketchbook and who was always illustrating. When the relationship ended, I bought myself a sketchbook and began drawing, "identification with the lost object," Freud would have said. My first cartoon was drawn early in my analysis. My analyst left on vacation, and I drew a picture of him sitting in an elevated lifeguard chair while I chopped away the legs of the chairs with my hatchet. It was easier for me to express my anger visually than verbally. During my first year of residency in psychiatry, I began sketching cartoons about my mistakes while doing therapy. I called it "Defenses of a First Year Resident." Conclusions: As a CAP fellow, I discovered that a colleague, Tom Singer, was writing a picaresque novel about becoming a therapist, and we collaborated on the book that eventually became "Who's The Patient Here?" Since then, my cartoons have grown from my practice as a CAP.