This page was translated automatically from Turkish. Read the original

This page is an AI-assisted Turkish summary of the study presented at the 26th World Congress of Psychiatry. The study belongs to the presenting authors; please refer to the original source when citing it.

EV0130

The mind on canvas: The intersection of art and psychiatry in Edvard Munch

THE MIND ON CANVAS: EDVARD MUNCH AND THE INTERSECTION OF ART AND PSYCHIATRY

Munch's works can be read as a visual phenomenology of mental illness, demonstrating that artistic creation offers a nonverbal means of accessing lived experience.

The aim is to examine how the artistic output of Edvard Munch (1863–1944), a pioneer of Expressionism, reflects psychopathological processes by integrating current empirical and historical findings from the biomedical literature. The method is a historical and conceptual review of the artist's biography, works, and relevant literature. Munch's life was marked by early losses: his mother and sister Sophie died of tuberculosis (in 1868 and 1877, respectively), followed by his father's death in 1889, and grief recurred throughout his work. Years of heavy alcohol use and symptoms later described as hallucinations and delusions culminated in a breakdown in 1908. He was hospitalized for eight months in Copenhagen under the care of Dr. Daniel Jacobson and treated with rest and electrotherapy. He continued drawing and painting during treatment and returned to Norway in 1909, entering a more isolated but highly productive period. His works track his symptoms over forty years like a visual diary: The Scream (1893) emerged from a hallucinatory experience that he described in his diary and reported actually hearing; The Sick Child (1885–1886) and The Dead Mother (1899) revisited the deaths of his sister and mother; Melancholy (1894–1895), painted in the year his brother died, depicted a withdrawn posture conveying sorrow; and Separation (1894) and The Kiss (1897) dissolved the boundaries between figures in ways that reflected the loss of self he associated with intimacy. Munch described painting as a form of self-therapy, while empirical analysis of his self-portraits revealed measurable changes in contrast, color, and complexity that coincided with these same periods of crisis. In conclusion, integrating neuroscientific and historical approaches deepens our understanding of the dynamic relationship between creativity and psychopathology, highlighting the visual arts as a valuable means of accessing experience beyond verbal expression.

All WCP 2026 summaries