LINDA FELDMAN : Therapy Team Finds Words for Healing

One is a 55-year-old Catholic priest and the other is a 79-year-old psychologist who was raised by an orthodox rabbi. What they have in common is the compassion to heal a damaged and diminished spirit--and the creativity to do so using the words of poets instead of the catch phrases of psychology.

The Rev. Tom Hedberg and Art Lerner run poetry therapy groups at the Exodus Recovery Center, a treatment unit for alcohol- and chemical-dependent patients at Daniel Freeman Marina Hospital in Marina del Rey.

Together, they have three Ph.Ds and seven master’s degrees. Over a meal at Nate and Al’s in Beverly Hills, where Hedberg ate potato pancakes with sour cream and apple sauce and Lerner was urging him to order kasha varniskas, they discussed Jung, St. Augustine, Norman Corwin and Martin Buber. They quote Emily Dickinson, Archibald MacLeish, Langston Hughes and Dante the way the rest of us mortals cite entertainment or sports trivia.

The two men met at Daniel Freeman in 1992, when Lerner was leading a poetry therapy group. Lerner found a way to combine the two loves of his life--poetry and psychology--and in the process created a way to touch people.

He’s one of the innovators in the emerging poetry therapy field and has several books to his credit, the latest being “Poetry in the Therapeutic Experience.” He’s also a published poet.

Of Hedberg, who came to Daniel Freeman as a counselor, Lerner said: “I found a mensch (authentic person), someone with compassion who was a man first. I didn’t even know he was a priest until we started working together to expand the program.”

Hedberg, a former football player and boxer at Santa Clara University, had worked with gangs in East Los Angeles, using music as a vehicle to get disturbed youngsters to express emotions. Although he loved poetry, he never imagined that it could be used therapeutically until he watched Lerner work.

“I found a double mensch, “ Hedberg said, “someone who believes, as I do, that life is a mystery to live, not a problem to solve. Someone who understood at a deep level that people have to live with themselves, others and a higher power. I am not a poet, though, and so he became my teacher.”

Poetry, Lerner says, provides insights into the human condition. With proper application by someone with a clinical background, it can provide patients with insights into their own condition.

“Man is capable of doing evil but has a need to be better, which he doesn’t always understand,” he said. “Sometimes, in order to resolve something, he makes a mistake and gives up integrity in the process. This creates a disturbance.”

Hedberg picks up the point: “We both believe in the soul and spirit of man, and poetry really touches that. Look at how Gregorian chants are so popular today. St. Augustine said, ‘Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee, oh God.’ I remember a patient who pushed the limits with me, insulted me and was irascible with the staff. He wanted miracles. Finally, I said to him: ‘Listen, I’m not God. I applied for this job.’ ”

Lerner remembers one session when he read a line from Langston Hughes: “Feed me daddy, and love me too.” A young woman in the group pulled a letter from her purse. She said it was from her father. In reality, she wrote the letter in response to a letter of her own--as part of a fantasy dialogue she maintained with her “father.” And Lerner used the material therapeutically.

Lerner was born in Chicago. His mother died in childbirth, and his father left him with maternal grandparents. His grandfather was very old and steeped in the Old Testament, constantly questioning the purpose of living. Most of the young Lerner’s development was hidden from public view.

Hedberg’s father was a builder. From an early age, he remembers being ashamed of his father’s anti-Semitism. Although he attended a Jesuit university, he did not know he was going to become a priest until he was in a near-fatal automobile accident and had an out-of-body experience that left him with the thought that when he actually did die, he wanted to know he had led a purposeful life.

“If I was born in a Jewish family, I would have been a rabbi,” Hedberg said. “I was drawn to a scholarly life, one that is intellectual and intense that dealt with life-and-death issues. I was influenced early on by the great Jewish thinkers like Buber and Heshel.”

After meeting two years ago, Lerner and Hedberg became friends immediately and went to seminars and conferences dealing with poetry therapy--a field, Lerner said, that is “composed of diverging experiences and interests.”

Lerner says the ancient Greeks told us that Asclepius, the god of healing, was the son of Apollo, god of reason and poetry. So, for him, poetry therapy is not a stretch.

Dr. David Murphy, medical director of the Exodus Recovery Center, calls Lerner a gift and Hedberg a treasure. “Dr. Lerner is the most quoted figure in Europe in the field of bringing arts to psychology. Father Hedberg is a remarkable priest and counselor for troubled souls. Together they have more degrees than teeth. It’s a gift to me that they emerged here,” he said.

As for the two men’s different religious backgrounds, Murphy says spirituality transcends religion. “In order to recover from an addictive disease, a person has to enhance their spirituality. And that’s what this dynamite duo, this odd couple, bring to the principles of recovery--but through the arts and literature,” he said.

Referring to poet Emily Dickinson, Lerner says: “There’s one line of hers that stirred something one day. It’s “tell the truth until it slants.” One person in the group responded that you can’t tell the truth to people because it hurts. So we got into a discussion about who does it hurt. It was a productive day. I left the hospital with my horizons expanded.”

According to Hedberg, many people have hurts that are denied, entombed parts of themselves. He likens a poetry therapist to an archeologist digging to uncover the hurts so that the person can touch them again and understand them.