Decalcomania and Anticipatory Aesthetics: Envisioning Days of Future Past

Physicians and healthcare professionals are tasked with prioritizing their own self-care while also caring for patients and their complex needs within a broken healthcare system. The identity formation they experience can be directly impacted by changes in professional and personal contexts. This article examines the power of a visual work of art to create opportunities for self-reflection, expression, and vulnerability through established constructs of the "third thing in medical education" and museum-based educational approaches such as the Personal Response Tour. I then apply Marcus Bussey's framework of the 'future senses' and anticipatory aesthetics to surrealist painter Rene Magritte's 1966 work Decalcomania. With the added lens of personal narrative juxtaposed with Magritte's visual work, the article delves into the power of anticipatory aesthetics and the future senses as a way to envision new futures and a path forward in the midst of professional identity questioning.