Sketching a Line to Reform:
Bernie Beitman--Psychiatrist, family man, lecture illustrator
The kitchen faucet drips at an even pace. Liquid flows from both hot and cold
water taps, sprinkles from a shower head into a tub filling fast, its drain
plugged, in a bathroom unattended. Somewhere, the laundry room perhaps, an open
spout emits a fine, but steady stream.
And beneath it all stands a woman crying out in agony, ripping at her blouse, thought balloons floating to either side of her head--one depicting an errant shower head dousing her crotch, the other, a house with water streaming like the falls of Niagara from open windows onto the front porch and lawn, two stories down.
This is not a nightmare. This is not a fantasy, dreamed up to wet the whistle of some water fetishist. No, this is slide 32, entitled ìOCD: The Drip,î from a November 12 PowerPoint presentation on Anxiety Disorders, delivered by Dr. Bernard Beitman, MU chairman and professor of psychiatry/neurology and renowned lecture illustrator.
ìThis,î Beitman said, in reference to his work,
ìis years of research, chapters of textbooks, decades of observation, summed up
into a single, nine-panel montage that, unlike notes, readings or simple
descriptions, allows the student to actually experience the madness that is
obsessive compulsive disorder.î
The Anxiety Disorders lecture, the latest in a series of controversial offerings from Beitman, is 12 pages long, with three learning objectives and 34 Power Point slides that break down as follows: 2 slides detailing brain anatomy; 5 title slides; 6 slides of text; and 21 slides of original artwork, dramatically illustrating such concepts as panic attacks, social phobias, post-traumatic stress disorder, and a new patient visit to a psychiatrist, in which the patient, enveloped by an apparent vortex, is levitating and spinning in circles over the desk of the psychiatrist.
ìItís revolutionary what heís doingî said Dr. Mark Milanick, an MU professor known for incorporating performance art into his lectures on respiratory physiology.
ìA lot of us lecture artists have suffered under the traditionalist dogma of this university. They tell us to teach to the boards, to describe facts, figures and ideas that wonít be utilized until the 3rd year clinical rotations, a whole year or two down the road. Thatís all well and good, but my concern is with the now. How can we entertain these students? How can we enrich them culturally? Beitman is the torch-bearer in our movement, and weíre all watching him, hoping his work will lead us out of the dark ages and into an educational renaissance.î
Such high expectations are nothing new for Beitman, who established himself, 16 years ago in his first year at MU, as a pioneer in the field of lecture illustration.
ìItís all Iíve ever really cared about,î Beitman said. ìThis psychiatry, neurology thingÖ itís just something to pay the bills. If I could illustrate full-time, Iíd drop the rest in a second.î
Before attending medical school at Yale University and completing his residency at Stanford, Beitman spent several months in New York City, pursuing his dream of becoming a professional lecture illustrator.
ìIt was tough,î Beitman said. ìThere was no call for freelance work. Clip art was all the rage at the time. It was less expensive, easier, neater. We just couldnít compete.î
After several months of rejections from
lecturers at every grade level, K through 16, Beitman was ready to give up. But
then one night, sleeping under the awning of a 57th street
delicatessen, he had a dream that changed everything.
ìI remember it vividly,î Beitman said. ìI was sitting in a chair, my torso encircled by a giant egg-like object, with three thought clouds bubbling out from my head. One cloud contained a donkey, standing upright, one leg crossed in front of the other, his hooves on his hips and his head cocked to the side in an inquisitive manner. Another cloud contained a giant sitting dog that was looking down with reproach at some poorly drawn object which, to this day, I still canít identify. Finally, the last cloud contained a cute, but sad chimpanzee, dressed in a polo shirt. In the dream, the content of these three clouds represented to me the answer to the question ëWhat I think you think of me,í as posed to a man in a business suit, an Asian woman in a sport blazer and a seductive vixen with hair still wet from a shower.î
The dream, as detailed above, later became the subject of a sketch for slide 23 in Beitmanís Anxiety Disorders PowerPoint presentation. At the time however, the dream served as a powerful motivator for Beitman to apply to medical school.
ìI decided,î Beitman said, ìthat I was done being the monkey in a shirt, that if these two women and one man, representative of lecturers everywhere, refused to hire me to illustrate their work, then I would become a lecturer myself, and illustrate my own work.
ìNow a lot of people ask,î Beitman continued, ìëWhy medicine?í Well, it was a fluke. I could have done anything. I just happened to choose that. The real question was what area of medicine. Itís something I gave a lot of thought to. After all, Iím versatile. I could have illustrated pathology, pharmacology, and of course, epidemiology, even now, is an untapped field. In the end, I took a long look at myself in the mirror and, suddenly, the answer was clear. I looked just like a psychiatrist. Today, I still look just like a psychiatrist. I couldnít be anything but a psychiatrist. And so from that point, my path was set and the rest, as they say, is history.î
A history still in the making, that is.
Beitman, described by the OMENís Peggy
Gray as ìa new generation of abstract expressionist, in the tradition of Rothko
and de Kooningî has, over the years, resisted categorization, moving through
phases, such as a Blue period of existential angst in 1987-1989, a Pink period
for one weekend in May 1992, and a brief flirtation with Cubism in the mid
1990s.
ìThe cubes, I will admit, were awkward,î Beitman said. ìTry drawing a business suit-clad OCD patient whoís imaging himself strangling a little boy, using nothing but squares and rectangles, and youíll know what I mean. But really, itís all about keeping things fresh. People are always trying to peg me into somethingóDadaism, Fauvism, Latin American ConceptualismóIím tired of it. Iím Bernard Beitman, the First. Not some second generation of some second-rate movement.
ìWhat people donít remember is that lecture illustration is a young field. Everything we do is a first, because there is no precedent. With each illustration, weíre sketching the blueprints of our emerging history.î
And Beitman, if he has his way, will drive that history straight into a new era of medical education.
ìMy ultimate goal,î Beitman said, ìis to condense an entire psychiatry course into a portfolio of 75 sketches, with an appendix for drug mechanisms, which donít translate well into art.
ìSuch a thing would almost eliminate the need for lectures. Instead, we could set up rotating exhibits. And as the artist, Iíd be more than willing to assist in tours and provide narration on the themes and meanings of my work.î