{"title":"Issue Information","authors":"","doi":"10.1111/spc3.12608","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12608","url":null,"abstract":"No abstract is available for this article.","PeriodicalId":13030,"journal":{"name":"Human Psychopharmacology: Clinical and Experimental","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48838962","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
<p>Christa Päffgen died in a corridor waiting for a hospital bed during the evening of July 18, 1988. She was 49 years old. Contemporaneous accounts state that she had cycled away from home in searing midday heat for distant downtown Ibiza hoping to buy hashish. She was found by strangers at a roadside that afternoon, unable to talk. A first hospital turned Christa away as a ‘vagrant junkie’; a second declined assessment because she had no health insurance; a third refused admission as she was an ‘old hippie’. Staff in a fourth hospital admitted her and ultimately diagnosed a cerebral haemorrhage, but could not insert a needle into her tired old veins: though she was undergoing methadone replacement therapy, she had previously been addicted to heroin for over 15 years.</p><p>Christa was more commonly known as ‘Nico’, and had been a model, actress, singer-songwriter and musician. She sang on four tracks of <i>The Velvet Underground and Nico (1967)</i>—including ‘Femme Fatale’ and ‘All Tomorrow's Parties'—with an austere, unornamented, deep contralto voice. Subsequent solo albums pushed against musical and emotional boundaries; and are considered unlistenable by some, ground-breaking by others. <i>The Marble Index</i> (1968),1 with its sorrowful plainsong, bleak swirling harmonium, and distorted viola gradually became regarded as an avant-garde classic. Nico associated with a <i>Who's Who</i> of male rock stars of the 1960/70s. Men were captivated by her beauty but threatened by her often scornful disdain: with notable exceptions, most treated her carelessly. In subsequent decades, she was no longer denigrated as a mere Muse or Mannequin, but instead valued as an exceptional though troubled musical visionary. But opiate addiction eroded her output remorselessly, and she spent most of her final years at the margins of the New Wave music scene, living precariously in Prestwich and Salford.</p><p>The relevance of the decline of ‘Nico’ to the concerns of psychopharmacologists and psychiatrists might seem somewhat tenuous: that is, before considering her experience of childhood trauma in wartime Germany, the recurring toll of abusive intimate relationships, and stigmatised attitudes towards drug addiction. The military call-up of her father contributed to her temporary placement in the largest orphanage in Europe, which was run according to mixed arch-Catholic and Nazi ideology. Her father subsequently died from war injuries before Christa could see him again. As a teenager she had to provide evidence at a court-martial, after being raped by a soldier of the post-war American occupying forces. As ‘Nico’, she was manipulated by a succession of men who exploited her allure, belittled her intelligence, and demeaned her artistry.</p><p>Nico showed the persistent detachment of recurrently traumatised individuals long before her preoccupying persistent concern about securing the next ‘fix’. As a single woman with only passing lovers and few possessions, and l
{"title":"‘Nico’—A lone voyager in Strange Seas","authors":"David S. Baldwin","doi":"10.1002/hup.2859","DOIUrl":"10.1002/hup.2859","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Christa Päffgen died in a corridor waiting for a hospital bed during the evening of July 18, 1988. She was 49 years old. Contemporaneous accounts state that she had cycled away from home in searing midday heat for distant downtown Ibiza hoping to buy hashish. She was found by strangers at a roadside that afternoon, unable to talk. A first hospital turned Christa away as a ‘vagrant junkie’; a second declined assessment because she had no health insurance; a third refused admission as she was an ‘old hippie’. Staff in a fourth hospital admitted her and ultimately diagnosed a cerebral haemorrhage, but could not insert a needle into her tired old veins: though she was undergoing methadone replacement therapy, she had previously been addicted to heroin for over 15 years.</p><p>Christa was more commonly known as ‘Nico’, and had been a model, actress, singer-songwriter and musician. She sang on four tracks of <i>The Velvet Underground and Nico (1967)</i>—including ‘Femme Fatale’ and ‘All Tomorrow's Parties'—with an austere, unornamented, deep contralto voice. Subsequent solo albums pushed against musical and emotional boundaries; and are considered unlistenable by some, ground-breaking by others. <i>The Marble Index</i> (1968),1 with its sorrowful plainsong, bleak swirling harmonium, and distorted viola gradually became regarded as an avant-garde classic. Nico associated with a <i>Who's Who</i> of male rock stars of the 1960/70s. Men were captivated by her beauty but threatened by her often scornful disdain: with notable exceptions, most treated her carelessly. In subsequent decades, she was no longer denigrated as a mere Muse or Mannequin, but instead valued as an exceptional though troubled musical visionary. But opiate addiction eroded her output remorselessly, and she spent most of her final years at the margins of the New Wave music scene, living precariously in Prestwich and Salford.</p><p>The relevance of the decline of ‘Nico’ to the concerns of psychopharmacologists and psychiatrists might seem somewhat tenuous: that is, before considering her experience of childhood trauma in wartime Germany, the recurring toll of abusive intimate relationships, and stigmatised attitudes towards drug addiction. The military call-up of her father contributed to her temporary placement in the largest orphanage in Europe, which was run according to mixed arch-Catholic and Nazi ideology. Her father subsequently died from war injuries before Christa could see him again. As a teenager she had to provide evidence at a court-martial, after being raped by a soldier of the post-war American occupying forces. As ‘Nico’, she was manipulated by a succession of men who exploited her allure, belittled her intelligence, and demeaned her artistry.</p><p>Nico showed the persistent detachment of recurrently traumatised individuals long before her preoccupying persistent concern about securing the next ‘fix’. As a single woman with only passing lovers and few possessions, and l","PeriodicalId":13030,"journal":{"name":"Human Psychopharmacology: Clinical and Experimental","volume":"38 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2022-12-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/hup.2859","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10465529","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}