Abstract
Physicians and healthcare professionals are tasked with prioritizing their own self-care while also caring for patients and their complex needs within a broken healthcare system. The identity formation they experience can be directly impacted by changes in professional and personal contexts. This article examines the power of a visual work of art to create opportunities for self-reflection, expression, and vulnerability through established constructs of the “third thing in medical education” and museum-based educational approaches such as the Personal Response Tour. I then apply Marcus Bussey’s framework of the ‘future senses’ and anticipatory aesthetics to surrealist painter René Magritte’s 1966 work Decalcomania. With the added lens of personal narrative juxtaposed with Magritte’s visual work, the article delves into the power of anticipatory aesthetics and the future senses as a way to envision new futures and a path forward in the midst of professional identity questioning.
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Acknowledgements
This paper was initially presented and reviewed as part of the Aesthetics of Care and Healing conference held at Princeton Theological Seminary in October 2023. I would like to express my appreciation to the leadership, faculty, staff, and students at the McGovern Center for Humanities and Ethics and the John P. McGovern Medical School for creating the space and opportunity for me to engage in this scholarly work. I have additional gratitude for the leadership and colleagues at the Meyer Center for Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics and Department of Pediatrics at Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine for their willingness to unearth a path forward where support flows freely. Lastly, I remain indebted to the faculty and fellows with the Harvard Macy Institute’s Art Museum-based Health Professions Education Fellowship (2021–2022) for being present, generous, and supportive at the very moment I needed it the most.
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Koshy, A.J. Decalcomania and Anticipatory Aesthetics: Envisioning Days of Future Past. Pastoral Psychol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-024-01129-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-024-01129-8