06 november 2024, Bob van Eerd
First the artwork, then the practice | Interview with Dirk de Wachter on 4 July 2024 in Antwerp
Bob van Eerd, Clinical Psychologist/Psychotherapist and art collector, interviewed psychiatrist Dirk de Wachter last summer about art, mental health, and meaning.
When we approach Flemish psychiatrist Dirk de Wachter, known for his books1, lectures, podcasts, TV appearances, and theater performances) with the request to contribute to an article about art, mental health, and meaning, a positive response quickly follows. Due to his busy schedule, he is unable to write a piece himself, and we decide on the format of an interview 2.
On a sunny day in July, we ring the doorbell of his home on a tree-lined street in Antwerp.
In the garden, there’s a sign that reads ‘Psychiatrist-Psychotherapist’. His practice is located in the basement. Little to no introduction is needed to steer the conversation toward the theme of ‘art’.
“When I first started my practice, I asked the well-known Antwerp artist Bruno Schnieders (Bruneau) to create a project with portraits. He asked me what I was reading at the time, and then made a series of portraits of all the authors I was studying back in 1994: non-fiction writers, philosophers, novelists, etc3. It’s a snapshot of that time. Around 25 portraits were created. Emmanuel Levinas, for example, is not among them, even though I frequently reference him, but that began after 1994.
This marked the beginning of my home practice. Before this, I worked in a group practice with two colleagues, but that was no longer feasible after I received an academic appointment in Leuven.
When we began the group practice, each of us invested 100,000 francs as starting capital. One colleague bought the furniture, another purchased various supplies and I bought a painting. To me, it symbolises something essential.
Not only my practice, but also my entire house is filled with art. In that regard, there is no difference, although the focus in the practice is on that series of portraits. The ‘gaze of the other’, the Levinasian concept of ‘face-to-face’, is also unconsciously expressed in that way.
It all fits together—the ‘gaze of the other’, which includes the meaning of existence, caring for others.
I always illustrate my lectures with works of art where I present more of a philosophical discourse, trying to bring an existential and spiritual dimension. I find artwork necessary to show the non-verbal, the less obvious.”
In your book De Wereld van De Wachter (The World of De Wachter), you write that “the essence of art is the ritual exorcism of human fear”4 and art that “…expresses, magnifies, sublimates and transcends fear.” And in De kunst van het ongelukkig zijn (The Art of Being Unhappy), you write about “…art that always touches darkness, something of hidden sadness.”5
“Heidegger talks about ‘living towards death,’ the finitude that gives meaning to existence; it’s because we are finite that we seek meaning.
To me, even more than I described in De Wereld van de Wachter, art is connected with death. Because we are mortal and because we find it incomprehensible and unbearable that we personally, as well as our loved ones, will eventually die.
Humanity began with the awareness of death. The unbearable nature of that realisation has led us to seek divinity and art is intertwined with that.
As soon as we became aware of mortality, we began to depict it, tell stories, dance and make music to give it a place, to make it bearable somehow and to feel connected within it.
In today’s world in which the church is pushed into the background in the Western world, art takes on much more of that role. To live with death, with finitude, with limitations, we need stories, music, dance and visual art.
Not as decoration, not as embellishment, but as something essential.
First came the (art)works, then came the practice, so to speak.
My entire house is a collection of works, symbolising my life. This is something I share with my wife, it’s something we do together. A huge collection of memories and symbols.”
In response to the quote “There is a universal need for consolation for existence” from his book Vertroostingen (Consolations)6 we began to discuss the concepts of beauty and consolation, inextricably linked in the Netherlands with the VPRO series by Wim Kayzer7
“Art—not decoration, mind you—also provides comfort. Comfort and beauty make life bearable because life isn’t always easy in my opinion. Art is one of those ways we can cherish the good life.
Because it can transform hardship into beauty. That’s why I always cite Francis Bacon, who isn’t so simple and uncomplicated like what we see in supermarkets and advertising. Bacon’s work is horrific, distorted and terrible, but it shows, at least to me—it’s different for everyone—the essence of human existence in all its twistedness.”
You write the following about Bacon: “…despite the rawness, it’s also a search for love.” 8. So, there’s also ambiguity.
“Ambiguity in art is very important; ambiguity represents life, which is important in my work. People are more than their diagnoses; there’s a multi-layered nature.
People are a hall of mirrors of identities, of which a diagnosis may play only a small part. But a major problem in our field is that people are sometimes reduced entirely to their diagnosis and sometimes, they personally reduce themselves to it.
So, art is complex and endures. The works of art here and upstairs have been hanging for over 30 years and continue to acquire new meaning, especially as my life evolves.
That’s the beauty of art and art is much more than simply drawing something beautiful.”
So, unambiguity in both art and psychotherapy is a pitfall?
“Levinas puts it this way: the incomprehension of the other is essential to connection.
As soon as we say ‘I know what this is,’ for example with depression, that’s the end of our work.
We must keep saying ‘I don’t fully understand,’ not in a cynical way, but to remain continually astonished, curious and interested in people’s stories.
Because we never fully know anything and I am convinced that humans are a mystery.
Everlasting love is sustained by not fully understanding each other.
But that pitfall of unambiguity is also found here: we shouldn’t consider art overly functional either. It’s not that when people come here with great sorrow, like the loss of a loved one, I can say, ‘Maybe go to a museum and look at a beautiful painting; it will make you feel better’—it doesn’t work that way. And it’s different for everyone. It’s about finding what might help each individual. Some people are less attuned to the classical arts and might go to a football match instead.
To me, art is certainly important and I think it is essential for humanity. It is as fundamental as religion and spirituality in the sense that the divine and the artistic are deeply intertwined.”
At the end, we briefly discuss the work of Vasily Grossman, often quoted in De Wereld van De Wachter.
“Yes, to me, Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman is a great book, the ‘War and Peace’ of the twentieth century, a book that covers everything, including small lives. That’s also my view of the world: here in a personal conversation with a patient’s very personal life. I then open the window, look out at the world and try to give something back to it. That’s my mission. Grossman does this brilliantly. It’s about major human conflicts and small human lives and the connection between them.
In the middle of the book, there’s a prophet who speaks about ‘the small good,’ an important concept in Levinas, who likely knew Grossman.
It is the literary artist Grossman who probably initiated that central theme in Levinas.”
Epilogue
It was a wonderful conversation. Even more so than in his books, it became clear how central art is to Dirk de Wachter’s life.
Essentially connected to the great themes of life and death. But also as a source of inspiration for his thoughts, speeches and actions.
After saying goodbye9 and leaving his home, his next appointment was waiting outside: a film crew that was going to do a story on De Wachter’s library.
Bob van Eerd,
Voorschoten
6-8-2024
1 Among others Borderline Times: Het einde van de normaliteit, 2011.
2 This interview was previously published in a special edition on Art and Mental Health by the LVVP: Dutch Association of Independent Psychologists & Psychotherapists. 3 The portraits in the treatment room are of Spinoza ("He represents the Über-ich, divinity in nature. He was the first to question the notion of a personal god and stated that 'divinity is everywhere and is the cosmos'"), Descartes (“he represents the Ego”),and Rousseau ("romanticism, eros, the Id"). There are also portraits of Bacon, Machiavelli, Sartre, Foucault and Adler. In the hallway are portraits of Hume, Marx, Schopenhauer, Korzybsky, Matisse, Confucius, Russell, Joyce, Plato and Darwin. And in the waiting room, there are portraits of Freud, Hegel, Leibniz and another of Descartes. 4 De Wereld van De Wachter, 2016, pages 170 and 175. 5 De Kunst van het ongelukkig zijn, 2019, page 74. 6 Vertroostingen, 2022, page 46. This book was written by De Wachter following an experience with a life-threatening illness. The course of this illness was mentioned in the interview, but is omitted in this report. 7 Van de Schoonheid en de Troost: A VPRO series from 1999 in which Wim Kayzer asked his guests—artists, scientists, writers, philosophers, and musicians—the philosophical question "What makes this life worthwhile?". The conversations inevitably circled back to the notions of beauty and consolation. 8 Vertroostingen, 2022, page 133. 9 Recorded by Boudewijn van Eerd.