Coup de Mot: Poetry as a Therapeutic Tool & the History of Mental Health Treatment

Course Description:

In this workshop, Autistic social worker, spoken word poet, and performance activist Steven T. Licardi will lead participants through an examination of the history of mental health treatment in the United States and the use of poetry as a therapeutic modality. Using selective snapshots, Steven will invite clinicians to explore the legacy of mental health treatment and to critically examine the ways in which we each, individually and collectively, continue to contribute to that legacy. Throughout this examination, participants will familiarize themselves with creative writing techniques, such as erasure/blackout poetry, letter writing, list making, and the golden shovel, as a means of empowering individuals and subverting this history. Participants are asked to come prepared to write and to reflect.

Course Outline:

• Workshop will begin with a land acknowledgment, general introductions, and a grounding exercise.
• Participants will be invited to identify for themselves something they struggle with, then to personify this struggle in a being or creature. The workshop will be framed as a journey alongside this being/creature.
• Steven will discuss Eugen Bleuler and the origins of the terms ‘schizophrenia’ and ‘autism’.
• Participants will then be invited to reflect on the being/creature that they have chosen and to list what they love about them, listing as many things as possible in a given time.
• Steven will then discuss the history of the Central State Hospital in Virginia and the Virginia Sterilization Act of 1924.
• Participants will be guided through a letter writing process addressed to the being/creature that they have chosen.
• Steven will end by discussing more recent history, such as the APA’s involvement in the 9/11 “Torture Memos”, and the cemeteries that remain across the United States from the state hospital system.
• Participants will complete a blackout/erasure poem on the letter that they have written.
• Closing dialogue and Q&A.

Learning Objectives:

Participants will be expected to:

• gain an understanding of the history of mental health treatment in the United States.
• become versed in the use of poetry as a therapeutic modality.
• experience firsthand the importance of introspection, authenticity, radical witnessing, validation, and self-reflection as necessary to ensuring the safety and well-being of both client and clinician.
• become familiar with dialectical thinking.
• increase their awareness of power dynamics within the therapeutic alliance and the larger legacy of mental health treatment.
• see poetry and performance as a means of subverting historic systems of oppression, marginalization, and exploitation by empowering individuals and communities to own their stories.

Bio:

Steven T. Licardi, LMSW is a writer and mental health advocate whose work sits at the intersections of art and social policy. He (usually) travels domestically and internationally using the power of spoken word to create empathic dialogue around, to confront the realities of, and to assist communities in dismantling the stigma surrounding mental health. As a child, Steven was diagnosed on the Autism Spectrum, an experience that deeply informs his work. Since 2016, his ever-evolving performance series Coup de Mot has been confronting how mental illnesses manifest out of oppressive social pathologies, with versions appearing in Vigo, Spain in 2016, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada in 2018, and in Thessoliniki, Greece in 2019. His most recent collection of poems, a billion burning dreams (STL, 2018) traces his own mental health journey from patient to professional. www.thesvenbo.com/books