Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (December 12, 1863 - January 23, 1944) tends to be forever associated with his 1893 painting The Scream, a stark yet distinctly colored expression of human fear. The Scream, part of a series called The Frieze of Life, was inspired by Munch's taking a walk at sunset and feeling a "breath of melancholy" beyond the reddened sky that made him shudder with inchoate dread.
The Nerve Clinic
Other works like Vampire and Love and Pain add to Munch's dark legacy, and for many years indeed Munch grappled with depression, strong mood swings, violent outbursts and alcoholism. Munch's creative temperament and his repressed, austere childhood were no doubt major causes of his troubled mental state and unhappy romantic relationships. In 1908, however, things came to a breaking point and Munch began to seek professional treatment.
At a Copenhagen "nerve clinic" run by Professor Daniel Jacobsen, Munch received corrective therapy for his heavy drinking and inner conflicts. As the artist later reflected:
I was on the verge of cracking up...[a]fter a trip to Sweden...and four days in the paradise of alcohol I had a genuine nervous depression...when you're constantly going over and over the same thing in your mind, the brain is damaged.
Heart Massages and Healthful Surroundings
Jacobsen's treatment was hardly rigorous and soul-probing. At his clinic, Munch was put on a curative regime of peaceful sedated sleep, good food, fresh air and herbal baths. He was also given what Jacobsen called "heart massages" by generally rather pretty nurses, along with "electrification" or subtle charges of current through the body — nothing akin to the violent electrotherapy which would be used later for psychiatric purposes. Jacobsen's main focus was Munch's alcoholism, a chemical trigger that tormented the mind and created a vicious cycle of anxiety and dependence.
Munch knew that Jacobsen's treatments were helping him and that the excessive drinking had to stop, but after a certain point he also began to secretly resist further therapy. "My fear of life is necessary to me," he noted privately. "My sufferings are part of my self and my art...I want to keep those sufferings." Munch had the presence of mind to work around Jacobsen at that juncture, using his own artistic talent as a personal form of catharsis and eventually managing to convince Jacobsen that he had improved enough to be released.
The Guardian Spirits
Some of the art self-therapy undertaken by Munch involved sketching animals at the zoo, just a short walk from the clinic grounds. Munch also completed a more color-intense than usual self-portrait and his Alpha and Omega series, the latter leaving him with a rare and "strange feeling of peace" and a release from pain.
Munch equalized his relationship with Dr. Jacobsen by painting Jacobsen's portrait as well, celebrating his loyalty to the "guardian spirits of art" by not allowing Jacobsen to tinker with his mind too much. Jacobsen was reportedly nonplused by the painting and thought it rather odd, but Munch's friend and fellow artist Ludvig Karsten declared Jacobsen's likeness to be a work of sheer genius.
Munch left Dr. Jacobsen's care in May of 1909, in far better shape than when he had arrived and with the basic clinical advice to avoid all forms of temptingly toxic alcohol, tobacco and women. Surprisingly, Munch and Jacobsen did not remain close in the years that followed or make much effort to keep in contact with each other. And though it was surely a struggle and seemed to require much self-isolation on his part, Munch lived to the age of eighty and had enough strength of will to keep from returning to that earlier bleak precipice of the psyche — where even the exhilarating madness of inspiration was just too much.
Sources
- Edvard Munch: Beyond the Scream -- Sue Prideaux (Yale University Press, 2007)
- The Life of Edvard Munch -- The Munch Museum
