Creative Writing and Therapeutic Effects

Double lecture by Birgit Bundesen and Alan Køster

“Quantitative and qualitative findings from REWRITALIZE: a manualized creative writing workshop led by authors as adjuvant psychiatric treatment” – Birgit Bundesen

Birgit Bundesen is a psychiatrist with a BA in comparative literature. She is working as chief physician at Mental Health Care Center Amager, Copenhagen, where she also leads the research programme REWRITALIZE. She is the founder and head of the Danish Center for Arts and Mental Health that develops art based interventions and programs for psychiatry users in clinical and museum spaces. In 2022 Birgit published a collection of poems together with a poet who is also a psychiatry user (“Smerte-Hjerte”, Gyldendal 2022). Her areas of research include phenomenological psychiatry, psychotic and poetic language functioning, arts and mental health.

"Self-narration, normative spaces and the potential of fictional narratives for self-understanding" – Allan Køster

Allan Køster is a senior researcher at the Danish Center for Arts and Mental Health and the Danish National Center for Grief. His primary area of research is existential phenomenology, with a particular focus on abnormal and liminal experiences. He has published extensively on topics such as the relationship between narrative and embodiment, phenomenological psychopathology, experiences of extreme isolation, and the existential dimensions of grief. Furthermore, he has made significant contributions to the integration of phenomenology and qualitative research methods. His current research explores the role of art in psychiatric recovery, with a particular emphasis on how creative writing may support affect regulation, self-exploration, and the re-establishment of a personal existential style.

Reading Group
The reading group will focus on the following two texts:

1. Results in terms of changes in self-reported wellbeing, psychotic-like experiences, mentalisation and self-efficacy for persons with schizophrenia spectrum disorders participating in the creative writing group intervention REWRITALIZE.

Henningsson, Susanne, Jon Toke Brestisson, Gry Ardal Printzlau, Bent Rosenbaum, and Birgit Bundesen. 2024. “Arts and Mental Health: Assessment of Changes in Self-Reported Wellbeing, Psychotic-like Experiences, Mentalisation and Self-Efficacy for Persons with Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders Participating in the Creative Writing Group Intervention REWRITALIZE.” Nordic Journal of Psychiatry 78 (8): 727–35. https://doi.org/10.1080/08039488.2024.2423761.

2. An essay on grief, time, and the limits of what is narratable from poet and philosopher Denise Riley. The text examines the way the passage of time may appear to freeze when we lose someone unexpectedly from our lives. The first half presents notes written at intervals by Riley in the wake of her son's death. The second half offers a postscript written some years later as Riley looks back with her philosopher's eye and with reference to writers such as Emily Dickinson, Lydia Davis, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Don DeLillo.

Riley, Denise. 2019. Time Lived, without Its Flow. Revised edition. London: Picador.

You may enjoy reading the text in dialogue also with Riley’s poetry, specifically “A Part Song.”

Riley, Denise. 2016. Say Something Back. Picador Poetry. London: Picador.