By Bruce Hershfield, M.D.

On November 19, Dr. Richard Kogan, a psychiatrist and concert pianist, will give a presentation about Beethoven to the Maryland Psychiatric Society. He plans to follow this one week later with a similar presentation at the Baltimore Symphony.

Dr. Kogan has been giving presentations about musicians who had psychiatric problems since at least 2001, when he lectured and performed at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association. Since then, he has given presentations about Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Gershwin, Mozart, Leonard Bernstein, and, most recently– at the APA annual meeting in Atlanta on May 14- – Scott Joplin. He has received standing ovations at the end of his previous presentations to the Maryland Psychiatric Society,– for example, when the played “Rhapsody in Blue” after he talked about Gershwin’s music and problems. Often, he plans his presentations to coincide with anniversaries, as he did when he gave one about Leonard Bernstein in 2007 because it was the 50^th anniversary of “West Side Story”.

The son of a gastroenterologist , he began giving piano performances at age six and went on to study piano and cello at Juilliard. He then did a pre-medical course of studies at Harvard because he decided that he was interested in a lot beyond music. He was part of a trio with Yo-Yo Ma and a violinist, Lynn Chap. He attended Harvard Medical School, where the Dean realized that he had a pretty advanced musical career and designed a special program that would allow him to do a clinical rotation for two months, but then take the next two months off to give concerts. He told me when I interviewed him in Atlanta on May 15 that it took him more years to graduate than it did for most of his classmates, but he was able to sustain a concert career at the same time. He is the Co – Director of the Human Sexuality Program at Weill – Cornell Medical Center and a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry there. In addition, he is artistic director of its Music and Medicine program and has a private practice in New York City.

Around 2000, he decided to combine his two careers. “I found that actually learning something about these individuals’ lives and struggles gave me some insight into the music that I was playing and helped me be more effective.” He considers this to be a third career. The Boston “Globe” commented, “Kogan has somehow managed to excel at the world’s two most demanding professions.”

He feels passionate not only about his mission of combining the two professions and teaching audiences about how they interact, but in helping to destigmatize patients who suffer from mental disorders. He said of these composers, “In many cases they composed masterpieces, not in spite of their illness, but because of it… It feels perverse to stigmatize a group whose members have made such extraordinary contributions to civilization… We have benefited in some cases because of their illnesses. In many cases, we could have helped them.” He mentioned that, when he played Rachmaninoff’s second piano concerto with the Baltimore Symphony earlier this year, he told the audience this piece was dedicated to the composer’s psychiatrist, who cured him of writer’s block. “His career would have ended were it not for the extraordinary help of Dr. Nikolai Dahl, who gave him a course of hypnotherapy, cured him of his depression, and encouraged him to write the second piano concerto, which is one of the most popular ever written. Certainly, it was most popular piano concerto ever dedicated to one’s psychiatrist.”

I asked him about his upcoming presentations in Baltimore. He commented that Beethoven was the quintessential example of the mad genius or the tortured artist, but that it’s hard to say if he had actual mental illness. “The deafness is such an essential part of his biography and the creative process because he actually became a much greater composer after he became deaf. For a musician, it’s catastrophic.” He plans to read a letter that Beethoven wrote to his brothers after he lost his hearing and when he was very strongly contemplating suicide. “Once he retreated into the silent world of his imagination, he was no longer hearing the music of his contemporaries and he was less under the influence of prevailing traditions. He started conjuring up sounds that were different from anything that anyone had ever created.”

Dr. Kogan has received many honors, including the Concert Artists Guild award, the Kosciusko Foundation Chopin Competition, and the Joan and Stanford Alexander Award in Psychiatry. He has lectured at Juilliard, at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, and at music festivals and medical centers. His music is available on a DVD—“Music & the Mind: The Life and Works of Robert Schumann”, Yamaha Touchstar Productions”.

He told me, “I also learn an enormous amount from my colleagues. I did a program on Scott Joplin last night. Afterwards I talked with people from his community and they actually shared with me some insight. I always wind up receiving at least as much as I give.”

I have been at several of his presentations and have always found them not only educational, but extremely moving. I feel that he makes me not only a better psychiatrist, but a better person, each time I listen to him. Dr. Kogan is a treasure. We are very fortunate that he will be coming back to Baltimore.

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