David Mirsky

A product of the South Bronx (see Ogden Nash; The Bronx; No Thonks) and educated at Bard College and Western Reserve School of Medicine, I pursued (an aborted) residency in neurology in New York and then spent two years in England, working for the National Health Service in two innovative psychiatric hospitals (Claybury and the Marlborough Day).  As a medical student, I spent two summers at Charenton Hospital, the Parisian equivalent of Bellevue, but with a long history of humane care for the “aliénés,” as patients were called, and the last refuge of the Marquis de Sade (see Peter Brooks’ play, Marat Sade). I completed my adult and child psychiatry training in Boston and have spent the subsequent decades working in community mental health programs in Massachusetts and teaching in medical and nursing schools.  Mentors, colleagues and patients have illuminated my path, along with the insights of Sigmund Freud, Dante Alighieri, Marcel Proust, Michel de Montaigne and, most recently, Bill Griffith (“Zippy” in the Boston Globe) — “outsiders” all, and exemplars of the compassionate life. I have taught My Five Psychiatric Obsessions at LLAIC in the Fall 2019 semester, and this course last fall.