You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Dr. Christopher Bullock (1947-2018) was a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in Boston with a long history of teaching and practice. He was an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and taught countless medical students, residents and fellows about psychiatry, psychotherapy, psychopharmacology and psychoanalysis. He first received an MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University and later graduated from the University of Massachusetts Medical School in 1984. After completing a residency in psychiatry at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center (originally the Boston Psychopathic Hospital), Dr. Bullock trained as a psychoanalyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (BPSI). He loved the connection between literature and psychoanalysis, and continually used poetry and prose in his work with both students and patients.
The Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute began an association with Emerson College in 2014 under the directorship of Murray Schwartz and Catherine Mitkus. Responding to a call for teaching proposals for interdisciplinary courses to be taught at Emerson around the intersection of psychoanalysis and liberal arts, Dr. Bullock conceptualized a course that would use The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien to illuminate major themes in psychoanalysis. Of note is that Dr. Bullock was hiking at the time he began to brainstorm, and as he ascended October Mountain, he developed the course idea with increasing clarity. He identified eleven themes that he felt the Tolkien trilogy clearly illustrated and spent over a