The British Journal of Psychiatry (2006) 189: 391-a18-391. doi: 10.1192/bjp.189.5.A18
© 2006 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
Psychiatry in pictures
ALLAN BEVERIDGE
Do you have an image, preferably accompanied by 100 to 200 words of
explanatory text, that you think would be suitable for Psychiatry in Pictures?
Submissions are very welcome and should be sent direct to Dr Allan Beveridge,
Queen Margaret Hospital, Whitefield Road, Dunfermline, Fife KY12 0SU, UK.
Samuel Beckett, the most emphatic modernist writer to emerge in the 20th
century, was born on 13 April 1906. Initially, Beckett did what his family
expected of him and worked as a lecturer in French but in 1934 he was
diagnosed with recurrent depression and referred to Dr Wilfred Bion at the
Tavistock Clinic in London. He attended Bion for psychotherapy three times a
week over 2 years. When his therapy ended he slipped away to
Paris where he remained for the next 50
years.
During the war years he worked with the Resistance and was subsequently
awarded the Croix de Guerre by General de Gaulle. After the war Beckett served
in Normandy with the Red Cross, an experience that gave him a vision of
humanity in ruins. Before this he was not a consistently
dedicated artist but his experience of human suffering with the Red Cross
informed the content of his subsequent writing
In contrast to the more familiar images of Beckett, this photograph reveals
an intimate and enduring portrait of the 1969 Noble Prize winner, the
unrepentant avant-garde artist, the last modernist.