According to the 19th-century French priest Joseph Roux, “science is for those who learn; poetry, for those who know.” But it should never be assumed that the two are mutually exclusive. Psychiatry, for example, is deeply rooted in the science of medicine, yet it has spawned at least two poets of note and a psychoanalyst who is the unlikely subject of a poem by WH Auden. Regarding the last, the elegy in question is “In Memory of Sigmund Freud” (1939), penned in a conversational style at a time when the world was descending into turmoil. Auden makes the inevitable comparison between poetry and psychoanalysis, in that both are liberators of the unconscious that focus upon the individual. But what about psychiatry’s two poets?

I once suggested to a medical student under my tutelage that he spare a thought for the work of RD Laing. He replied earnestly that he had one or two of her albums yet, had I rolled my eyes to heaven and begun expounding on The Divided Self (1960), I doubt he would have ended up any the wiser. Instead, as I sensed in my young protégé an appreciation of the arts, we spent a little time discussing how Laing was a patron of philosophy and literature who would eventually publish volumes of his own poetry, such as Knots (1970) and Sonnets (1979).

He was born Ronald David Laing in Glasgow on October 7, 1927. An only child, he would one day openly describe his parents as somewhat odd, although his own son later suggested in a biography that this sentiment might have been somewhat of an exaggeration. Either way, Laing was well provided for, educated at Hutcheson’s Grammar School before enrolling in medicine at the University of Glasgow. Upon qualification, he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps, although his asthma kept him from active service and he was honourably discharged in 1953. He worked briefly as a consultant at the Gartnavel Royal Hospital in Glasgow before transferring to the Tavistock Clinic in London where he began to develop some of his seminal ideas in the field of psychiatry.

Although Laing’s early career was unremarkable (he failed his final medical examinations and was obliged to re-sit in order to qualify), he was, as we know, to have a significant impact upon the conceptualisation of psychiatry in the 20th century. He challenged the conventional view of psychiatric illness as a group of diagnostic entities, asserting that it overemphasised unproven biological components at the cost of social, intellectual and cultural elements. His name is linked with antipsychiatry, although he disliked the term itself. After an illustrious career, he died relatively young on August 23, 1989.

Laing’s poetry showcases a unique skill in describing complex human dynamics using very simple language. In Knots, for example, he describes the manner in which “human bondage” is subject to “tangles, fankles, impasses, disjunctions, whirligogs, binds” in a style that reads almost like the verses of a children’s poem.  

Laing’s poetry is beautiful, accessible and hauntingly true, reading like a kind of psychodynamic allegory. But Laing was not the only psychiatrist to have dabbled in verse. Emil Kraepelin, although an intensely private man, wrote poetry that was published posthumously in 1928. Born on February 15, 1856, in Neustrelitz, Germany, he was conferred with his MD in 1878. By 1886, he was professor of psychiatry at the University of Dorpat in what is now Estonia and, by 1890, he was professor of psychiatry at the University of Heidelberg. He was elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1908. He died on October 7, 1926. 

Kraepelin wrote prolifically and is widely considered the father of modern biological psychiatry; indeed, were Freud not so eminently charismatic, Kraepelin might well have usurped him as the most famous psychiatrist in history. Kraepelin published hundreds of dreams during his career, but his most important work is perhaps Compendium der Psychiatrie (1883), in which he sets out his thesis that psychiatric illness should be investigated for physical causes in the same empirical manner as that of any other medical specialty. In addition, he devised a means of classifying mental illness that is still referred to clinically today. And, of course, he wrote romantic poetry peppered with references to nature and travel, influenced by his visits to India, Java and America. Through the verse, we see a pensive and trapped man who, in another life, might have chosen a different path.

Perhaps he preferred to learn than to know.