David Rosen

A physician, a psychiatrist, and a Jungian analyst, Dr. David Rosen spent 25 years in College Station, Texas, where he held the McMillan Professorship in Analytical Psychology at Texas A&M University. When he retired in 2011, Rosen moved to Eugene, a city he had first visited six years earlier. "I house-sat for someone on Crest Drive and worked on a book," he explains. "I enjoyed Eugene." Rosen has had more than a dozen books published. His 1993 volume, Transforming Depression: Healing the Soul through Creativity, documents a long-term research project sparked by his interviews with Golden Gate Bridge suicide-attempt survivors in the mid-1970s, and offers a therapeutic approach that engages the patient's creativity. His most recent book, published this year, is Spelunking through Life, a collection of 30 haiku, illustrated by Diane Katz. He is currently working on his first novella, a work of historical fiction about Lane County's enigmatic Opal Whiteley, whose childhood nature diary became a national bestseller in the early 1900s. As a member of the Pacific Northwest Society of Jungian Analysts, he also still sees patients. "People always said I was funny," says Rosen, who no longer has a convenient captive audience in a classroom. "I like to tell stories and jokes. When I retired, I got up the nerve to do stand-up comedy." Rosen will appear in the guise of Singing Senior Comedian Dr. Nada for open mic comedy night in the Green Room at Doc's Pad, 710 Willamette, between 9 and 12 pm on Thursday, August 11. Dr. Nada warns that the current political situation will be the theme of his presentation.