ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION This chapter presents ways of teaching psychiatry through music, not as it ought to be done but as it might be done. The methods and materials described here do not rest on an acknowledged body of literature but have emerged largely through local discussion involving the Division of Psychiatry and School of Music at the University of Nottingham. Through evolution, rather than design, the course has concentrated on post-Renaissance, Western music. I took a more conscious decision to focus on particular individuals, rather than attempt to cover a broad range, or list of cases. This refl ects a belief that genuine understanding in psychiatry and music takes time to develop. The principles I have chosen are Robert Schumann (1810-56) and Peter Grimes (opera by Benjamin Britten, 1945). Both are brought together through words and music; with Schumann through biography; and in Grimes through the libretto. I am deeply indebted to scholarship on Schumann, who lived through severe psychiatric disorder, and the character of Peter Grimes, who acts as a portrayal, but perhaps also a working through, of more complex, liminal areas that dramatise and problematise for us what psychiatry is and what it has been.
