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  • tea-drinking, cat-loving, freelancer - author, editor, tutor, workshop leader
  • Ex-Head of Psychology - 20+ years of Edexcel, IB, AQA
  • Creator www.psychologyrocks.org
  • Head of Pstickology at PsychStix,
  • Trained in: Athens, Berlin, Barcelona, Prague
  • Workshops: Vienna
  • Tutoring: Indonesia, China, Italy, Mexico, Spain, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, USA, Russia

psychstix76@gmail.com

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Strange things I have googled in the last year….

  • How did damming the Columbia River affect the salmon trade?
  • Was Percy Bysshe Shelley a member of the Illuminati?
  • Could butterflies withstand an atomic bomb?
  • Do insects make war?

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  • Application of knowledge is now a critical skill in the exam for all students;
  • Creating interdisciplinary links nurtures confidence and cognitive flexibility
  • Year 12 -13 can be a difficult time for multiple reasons - enrichment days where you are asked to do something different or even to work with students across different departments
  • To begin to build package of VVG resources to discuss concepts from research methods, approaches, issues and debates
  • To do something different/memorable
  • Something that could be as a memorable inspiration for an ongoing wall display; fresh for September open mornings etc;
  • Some great motivational quotes

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Biological diathesis

  • Prenatal environment
  • Neurodiversity
  • Substance-abuse
  • Genetics
  • Neurochemical imbalance
  • Brain injury

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  • depressive episodes
  • hypomanic episodes
  • anxiety
  • auditory and visual hallucinations
  • paranoia
  • insomnia
  • nightmares
  • stomach pain
  • seizures

Who was the first person to speak into this Frankenstein-esque artwork?

Diemut Strebe - ‘Sugababe’

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Who is this mean and what was the relevance of the chicken?

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1 point for the country

Up to 3 bonus points for more specific details!

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Did Vincent paint this scene from life or memory?

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1 bonus point if you know

the Latin name;

Up to 2 more bonus points if you know the significance of this flower to VVG’s art

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Why was Vincent never able to learn to play the piano?

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  • mother first baby still-born;
  • second baby born same day, one year later
  • both called Vincent
  • anxiety during pregnancy
  • foetal MRI; negative correlation between maternal stress and infant’s hippocampal volume
  • poorer socio-emotional development at 18 months (Wu et al. 2022)
  • could van Gogh‘s nervous system have been compromised from the start?

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Artistic aptitude/mental health difficulties - born or made

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  • Implications of foetal MRI research into biomarkers, e.g. for schizophrenia (e.g. Hayat & Sami 2021)
  • Neuro-atypical is not necessarily neuro-negative
  • the same traits that predispose a child to potential future difficulties may also be turned to their advantage, depending upon the situation
  • van Gogh’s daily fixation on the same scenes
    • wheatfield, orchard, olive
    • documented repeatedly - stored memories and understanding of the relationships between line form, light and shade were so well rehearsed that he was able to experiment with exaggeration/abstraction

Kialo debates – students can contribute, and peer review each other’s contributions

https://www.kialo.com/

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  • Homeschool age 8; governess Anna Birnie, age 17
  • father, a painter, committed to a psychiatric hospital
  • encouraged Vincent to draw sketches for his family
  • few surviving records from Vincent’s early life
  • sister Elisabeth (Lies) remembers Vincent as
    • a serious, sensitive and eccentric child, in both appearance and habits
    • preferred solitude and the company of insects and birds to family/other children.
  • Did Vincent have difficulties developing friendships from childhood? Was he bullied by his peers? self-schema/ maladaptive core beliefs

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  • voracious reader, e.g. Dickens, Shakespeare
  • psychologically fragile, yet drew upon a well of resilience and optimism
  • uncommon depth of emotion and delight in the world
  • a deep and enduring empathy for the poor
  • relentless perseverance on his quest for self-improvement
  • perhaps, he found it more rewarding to immerse himself in the social worlds of the characters in his fictional novels
  • revisiting/reinterpreting each interaction much like the scenes in his paintings.

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  • prodromal symptoms
  • disagreeable, irritability
  • craved love and attention of others
  • found interaction wearing
  • social awkwardness
  • dismissed from a variety of jobs (art dealer, preacher, teacher and bookseller)
  • aged 27 decides to become an artist
  • enrolsin an art academy; drops out after 3 weeks
  • people were ‘‘hateful’ (as with the piano lessons)

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  • determined to succeed professionally and personally
  • Vincent travelled to Paris to join Theo
  • he loved the camaraderie of living amongst other artists
  • emboldened to adopt a brighter palette
  • learned from Pointillists such as Seurat and Signac how the brain ‘sees’ green when spots or points of blue and yellow are placed next to each other, in close proximity
  • began using his characteristic short brush strokes with contrasting colours

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  • pairing contrasting colours together to enhance each other
  • Psychophysics - relationships between physical stimuli and the sensations and perceptions that they trigger.
  • Pointillists (Signac and Seurat), Divisionists and Neo-Impressionists recognised that when complementary colours are placed next to one another the luminance of the colours is increased
  • Luminance refers to perceived brightness and is a crucial tool in terms of manipulating the viewer’s (and/or customer’s) visual attention and memory.

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  • left Paris; headed south in search of huge skies; zero pollution - the Mistral
  • hoping to establish a commune of like-minded friends who would nourish and inspire each other - the Yellow House
  • frequent punishing social experiences yer eternally optimistic regarding the possibility of future happy unions.
  • a dream that was never to be fulfilled.
  • Paul Gauguin

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  • initial exhilarating conversations, after just nine weeks the men’s relationship was at crisis point.
  • Gauguin feared for his life due to Vincent’s uncontrollable rage;
  • Vincent’s own safety that was most at risk
  • savage row, cut off almost all of his left ear with a razor
  • Wrapped the detached piece in paper
  • Presented to a maid, who worked at a local brothel.
  • Despite 1700 pages of correspondence between Vincent and his friends and family, the motive for this gruesome act remains a mystery.

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Qualitative analysis

of the letters;

see Exercise 1

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  • several hospital admissions
  • wellbeing deteriorating
  • no longer able to live independently
  • voluntarily admitted himself to Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, an asylum in the village of Saint-Rémy (18 fellow patients, all with more severe symptoms than VVG)
  • he ticked every one of Davis’s four D’s of diagnosis (Davis 2009).
  • VVG was diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy, by two doctors;. whether valid or not, the diagnosis at this point was at least reliable.

Deviation from social norms

Eighty of his neighbours had signed a petition asking the mayor to force van Gogh back to his family or have him incarcerated. Anonymous testimonies suggest women in particular were frightened by Vincent’s inappropriate language and behaviour

Dysfunction

He was malnourished and unkempt when he admitted himself to Saint-Rémy

Distress

His letters detail his depressive/dysphoric episodes and his fear that his health would deteriorate further

Danger:

He threatened Gauguin with the razor with which he later mutilated his ear; he ate his paints (which historically contained lead, arsenic and other highly toxic substances) and soil, and had drunk turpentine and paraffin.

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  • strong aniseed flavoured spirit
  • extremely popular with artists and writers, including Toulouse-Lautrec and Oscar Wilde
  • they claimed that the drink freed their minds and inspired creativity.
  • others believed the drink was linked to violence and depravity, e.g. 1905 - Jean Lanfrey murdered his wife and children
  • Absinthe banned in many European countries.

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  • French psychiatrist Valentin Magnan evidence for the ban
  • Experimented on dogs, guinea pigs, cats and rabbits
  • IV: inhaled wormwood oil fumes or pure alcohol.
  • DV: observed their behaviour - did they die or not! (Nominal)
  • Findings: If exposed to wormwood oil animals were overexcited, had seizures and, in some cases, died.
  • Conclusion: thujone, the active ingredient in wormwood oil, was epileptogenic.

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  • thujone is a GABA antagonist
  • it binds with GABA receptors on the postsynaptic cell
  • as GABA is an inhibitory neurotransmitter, thujone allows neural activity to continue unchecked
  • potential cause of the convulsions (seizures)

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Critical thinking

  • the quantity of thujone in absinthe is negligible in comparison with straight wormwood oil.
  • ill effects more likely to have been caused by the very high alcohol content (up to 74%)
  • some of VVG’s symptoms, e.g. hallucinations, delirium (severe disorientation and confusion), depression and anxiety = alcohol withdrawal syndrome

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  • Cornelis vG (Cor) allegedly committed suicide in 1900, following the Anglo-Boer war. Willemina vG (Wil), early feminist
    • similar symptoms e.g. hallucinations and violent aggressive outbursts
    • admitted to a psychiatric hospital in 1902
    • stayed for 40 years until she died aged 79
    • Anna sold 17 of VvG’s paintings to pay for Wil’s medical care
  • Theo also died earlier, he too had bouts of melancholy but eventual cause if death was probably syphilis

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  • VVG - dysfunction of GABA interneurons
  • linked to family history of schizophrenia; absinthe addiction
  • GABA imbalance an affect on contrast perception;
  • Quantitative analysis of brushwork and correlation with absinthe consumption

1889-1890

1886-1888

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The changing style of van Gogh’s brushwork was closely associated with substance abuse. Thujone impaired GABA interneuron function possibly causing him to increase the contrasts in his work in order to compensate for problems in lateral inhibition in his visual cortices.

”Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I see before me, I make more arbitrary use of colour to express myself more forcefully”

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  • 1956 - Henri Gastaut, an epileptologist, argued van Gogh may have been particularly sensitive to the negative an an effects of absinthe;
  • Possible pre-existing limbic-temporal lobe lesion
  • Effects may be similar to Kluver-Bucy syndrome (KBS); monkeys had amygdala removed
  • Humans with damage in this region exhibit many of Vincent’s symptoms including seizures, inappropriate sexual behaviour and pica (compulsive eating of non-edible objects/substances such a his paints, soil and turpentine).

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hypergraphia

(excessive writing/compulsive drawing): Vincent is thought to have written over 2000 letters in his lifetime)

hyperreligiosity

his obsessive reading of the Bible led to him being sacked from his job as an art dealer and when he did work as a preacher in a mining community he was even sacked from this post due to his ascetic approach which the church found unseemly

hyposexuality

despite the residents of Arles remonstrating about Vincent’s sexual conduct, his letters repeatedly refer to his belief that sexual activity detracted from his work;

mental rigidity

(excessive concern with details and accuracy and ‘sticking’ to one subject in conversation, for example, for longer than others deem necessary): these traits fit with how Vincent was viewed by the other artists in Paris, his family and friends and his highly detailed letters where he describes every detail of his current works;

Intensified mental life

Deeped cognitive and emotional responses that can lead to prolific creative output and intense solitary pursuits.

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  • no way that such hypotheses could ever be tested
  • no formal autopsy
  • no way of knowing whether van Gogh’s temporal lobe was damaged
  • Also there is the problem of bidirectional ambiguity; recurrent seizures could have caused the damage rather than pre-existing damage making him more vulnerable to the epileptogenic effects of absinthe.

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  • Speculative; subjective accounts, secondary data; questioning concepts of validity; records made with different audiences in mind for different purposes
  • Approaching idea with caution; critical thinking the research with caution, avoid drawing generalisations without appreciating complexity
  • Seeking evidence to disconfirm rather than confirm
  • Timeless wisdom from the letters
    • “I am always doing what I can't do yet in order to learn how to do it”
    • “Doing little things well is a step toward doing big things better”
    • “Great things do not just happen by impulse, but as a succession of small things linked together”

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Thank you for listening; if you liked this talk, come and chat to me about …

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  • bespoke training (IB/AL)
  • authoring/editing
  • Hodder training days with Guy and Ashok

Your wish is my command!