Media issues concerning privacy drew together medical professionals from Penn and the surrounding community Wednesday.
The discussion was part of the Freud, Franklin and Beyond seminar series — a program led by Penn faculty fostering debate on psychology in contemporary society — and dealt with the psychoanalysis of celebrity patients and the subsequent effects on the patients’ privacy.
Annenberg School for Communication professor Sharrona Pearl began the panel by describing several case studies in which publication of a patient’s condition propelled the patient to celebrity status.
An example she gave was nineteenth-century physician John Elliotson, who treated two female patients for hysteria in front of a live audience.
Pearl deliberately refrained from showing photographs of the patients from these case studies to emphasize the importance of their privacy.
“Celebrity shines a garish light on confidentiality,” English professor Max Cavitch said. He spoke of the poet Anne Sexton, whose biographer was given access to audio recordings of her psychiatric sessions after her death.
The panel also addressed voyeurism, regarding psychoanalytic cases and those in the media. On the topic of talk shows such as Larry King Live that delve into personal information, Bioethics professor Arthur Caplan joked, “Oprah’s still mad that I wouldn’t go on her show.”
Caplan added that Steve Jobs was pressured by the media to disclose personal medical information when he took a health-related leave of absence from his job as Chief Executive Officer of Apple.
Frederick Fisher from the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia spoke on his experience treating the wife of a famed mobster. Privacy was key, he said, because of the high-profile nature of her husband’s life.
The panel, which was held at the Slought Foundation Gallery, coincided with the gallery’s exhibit titled “The Wolf Man Paints!” The exhibit features the drawings and paintings of Sergius Pankejeff, a celebrity patient of Sigmund Freud. Pankejeff, who Freud treated for depression, became known as “the Wolf Man” due to the publicity of a dream he had about a pack of wolves.
The exhibit remains open until Jan. 22.
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