{"id":28560,"date":"2015-05-20T16:00:16","date_gmt":"2015-05-20T20:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=28560"},"modified":"2015-05-21T12:29:57","modified_gmt":"2015-05-21T16:29:57","slug":"feature-richard-kogan-resilience-is-a-skill-you-can-practice-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2015\/05\/20\/feature-richard-kogan-resilience-is-a-skill-you-can-practice-it\/","title":{"rendered":"FEATURE | Richard Kogan: \u201cResilience is a Skill, You Can Practice It”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Richard
Merger of master pianist and master psychiatrist makes Richard Kogan a powerful role model<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

T<\/span>his week, at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, there were 11,000 attendees at the American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting<\/a>, heatedly debating mental health issues ranging from medication, diet, and diagnosis, to addiction, brain science, and ethics plus much much more. But there was one event about which there was no debate, when 1,232 psychiatrists filled every seat in the John Bassett Theatre for a lecture-recital by master pianist and eminent psychiatrist Richard Kogan, whose annual presentation at the A.P.A devoted to the mind and music of one of the great classical composers, consistently enthralls and illuminates every individual in the audience. This year Kogan transported the audience with a program devoted to the Mind and Music of Chopin.<\/p>\n

With parallel and equal top-flight careers as a concert pianist and a psychiatrist, Kogan, who studied piano at Julliard and music and medicine at Harvard, (where he formed a trio with his close friends Yo-Yo Ma and Lynn Chang) and is currently the Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Weill Cornell Medical Center, is uniquely qualified to report on the psychological profiles of great composers while demonstrating their artistic development through masterful performances of their works. There is nothing reductionist about Kogan\u2019s integration of biographical detail and musical output, instead there is an increased understanding of the interplay of life and art that results in a far more enriched experience for the audience than the typical format of wordless performances backed up by specialized program notes.<\/p>\n

Kogan\u2019s presentations on composers including Rachmaninoff and Tchaikowsky, to name only two, have necessarily delved into dark conditions such as writer\u2019s block and suicidality. With Chopin he moves to the positive side of the spectrum by focusing on the composer as a figure of resilience who was able to respond to extreme trials by the constructive application of his musical genius. In psychological terms, resilience is the ability to recover from traumatic events to such a degree that life goes on as well as it did before the trauma. As few of us get through life without being subjected to some trauma, resilience is an essential feature of mental health. It is a complex phenomenon, which requires a conscious effort to develop and needs to be in place before it is required, yet there has been relatively little emphasis on its cultivation until quite recently. In Kogan\u2019s view, music can be a key component in the development of resilience, powerfully exemplified by Frederic Chopin.<\/p>\n