Opinion: Therapy and poetry have more in common than you think
“Confounded by a confusing expression or dream from a patient, I might seemingly shift gears and ask myself, 'What if this were a poem?'” writes psychiatrist and poet Owen Lewis.
Who’s on the couch here? The psychiatrist or the poet? The poem or the practice of psychiatry?
As a poet and a psychiatrist/therapist, I exist in both practices, and the worlds of each enrich the other. Each speaks with abandon, and each interrogates the other, and there are many ways in which each discipline supports the other, some obvious, some not so obvious.
