David F. L. Dawson

As a psychiatrist I have used both of my initials, but as a writer and painter I settled on David Laing Dawson, the Laing coming from a seafaring ancestor who captained a wooden ship from the Orkney Islands to Victoria, B.C. in 1850.

Through its history psychiatry, or psychiatrists, have influenced the arts, painting, writing, and film, and the arts have certainly influenced psychiatry, usually to the enrichment of both. I know I really should have focused on one thing in my working life, one endeavour, one vocation, but I never could. As a psychiatrist I might put that down to a bit of ADD. But then I might miss the poetry, drama, and comedy of life. And really, our stories are so much richer and more complex than a diagnostic label.