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The editor’s introduction places the article within the history of art therapy’s viewpoints, highlighting how creative expression can help individuals observe trauma from a slight distance, support healing, and resonate with others. 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My introduction to the first issue stated: “Viewpoints provides a forum for sharing ideas and graphics about issues facing art therapists.”  \nTwenty years later, I became Associate Editor, once again editing viewpoints. So for these historical reasons, I was especially pleased when, for the 40th anniversary issue, Journal Editor Lynn Kapitan asked me to select a significant viewpoint I edited.  \nIn looking through those viewpoints, I have been impressed with their variety, covering personal art and therapy experiences, new ways of using art therapy, and many outcries for social action. I was especially pleased to support Maxine Junge and Janice Hoshino in a series of viewpoint articles by art therapists of color. I want to recognize this series as significant and important, particularly as part of art therapy’s history.  \nMy choice for a single article to reprint, however, is of a very different nature. It is one that touches my heart:“The Heartlift Operation” by Alan Rosen (2004, 21[3], 163–167) . With this selection, I am returning to my wish 25 years ago for viewpoints to provide a forum for images as well as verbal ideas. I recruited this piece for the Journal because it is a memoir of a horrific experience, expressed through drawings. Alan Rosen takes us with him on his very personal frightening journey of quintuple bypass surgery. I love the humor of the art and the clarity and eloquence of the accompanying language. He not only tells us, he shows us how making art “became a sort of meditation or reflection…so I felt more curious about this new experience rather than feeling I was suffering through it.”  \n“The Heartlift Operation” is one of the clearest articulations I have seen of how art can help one heal from trauma, and surprisingly, it is humorous as well.  \nI am a psychiatrist in an integrated community and hospital mental health services, but in another life I am a printmaker. I always draw my way through my journeys, whether for work or leisure, to remote Australia, East  \nTimor, and further afield. So it was just a reflex for me to consider my quintuple coronary bypass graft operation tobe another trip, a new journey to doodle my way through.  \nDuring my early convalescence, I was listening to Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1978/ 2001) serialized on radio yet again, so I began to conceive of what I’d gone through as a “quintuple hyperspace bypass.”At other times, I would try to anticipate and explain it away to my asymptomatic self as merely an amendment of my interior, internal cosmetic surgery, or a heartlift operation (Figure 1). Most of my drawings of this experience (23 in total) were done the week or so I was in hospital. A few were added during the aftermath.  \nWhen people ask me, as several have, did I draw as“therapy,” I’d have to answer, “No,” not intentionally, though doing so may have been unconsciously therapeutic in effect. By therapy they meant help in distracting me and taking my mind off the pain and discomfort by occupying my mind and hands with something to do besides expressing the internal sensations of trauma, on the old “it’s-betterout-than-in” principle.  \nThis question has led me for the first time, and sort of artificially, to think about the function of such autobiographical doodling for me. I believe it helped me stand a step away and observe my own experience from a slight distance as it was unfolding. It didn’t take away the discomfort—in some ways it amplified it—but it became a sort of meditation or reflection upon it so that I felt more curious about this new experience rather than feeling I was suf","cbCaieiXKOGrjpo3","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaieiXKOGrjpo3","pdf",907907,"English","# Introductory Comments\n## Historical context and editorial choice\n# The Heartlift Operation\n## Memoir through drawings\n## Drawing as reflection and communication\n## Postoperative dreams and patient preparation","[{\"question\":\"Why did the editor reprint “The Heartlift Operation”?\",\"answer\":\"The editor chose it because it is a memoir expressed through drawings, returning to a long-standing aim for viewpoints to share both images and ideas. It is seen as a significant articulation of how art can support healing from trauma.\"},{\"question\":\"How did Alan Rosen describe the role of drawing during recovery?\",\"answer\":\"He did not draw intentionally as therapy, but the act became reflective—like meditation—helping him feel more curious about his experience rather than suffering through it. He believed expressive mediums should first have meaning for the creator and then may help others connect.\"},{\"question\":\"What concern did Rosen raise about using cartoons and stories with patients?\",\"answer\":\"He suggested that such images could prompt preparation for possible postoperative experiences, but also acknowledged they might frighten people away depending on how and when pictures and stories are used.\"}]","The Heartlift Operation - Alan Rosen - Viewpoints | PDF"]