Before I read Jamison’s memoir An Unquiet mind, I had never read an author that could make symptoms of an illness both desirable and feared at the same time. Kay Redfield Jamison knows first-hand what it is like to suffer from manic-depressive illness, and she has devoted her life to helping people with mental illnesses like her own. Her memoir captures the invigorating and overly sensuous side of her manic states alongside the dark emotional caverns of depression.
Jamison’s full-disclosure is both poetic and eye-opening. “The ideas and feelings are fast and frequent like shooting stars, and you follow them until you find better and brighter ones,” she claims, describing her manic states (67). She juxtaposes her elation with her depression: “Everything previously moving with the grain is now against – you are irritable, angry, frightened, uncontrollable, and enmeshed totally in the blackest caves of the mind” (67).
I give An Unquiet Mind 4 out of 5 stars for Jamison’s ability to turn her struggles, experiences, psychiatric expertise into a work of literary genius. She has turned the mind into a work of art and shed light on what it is like to live with manic-depressive illness.
Life Lessons
- Don’t underestimate the power of psychiatric medications to save lives. Jamison discusses the unfortunate side-effects of lithium but at the same time acknowledges the role of the medication in allowing her to live a normal life. Curing symptoms of manic-depressive illness is more complicated than simply taking your meds. It also requires a willingness to take the meds.
- Write what you have experienced AND studied. Kay Redfield Jamison is a credible authority on manic-depressive illness not only because she has studied it, is a psychiatrist, and received a doctoral degree, but also because she has lived though the illness herself.
- This book illustrates why someone might prefer to experience the effects of a disorder over the side effects of a medication. On Lithium, Jamison could barely read, and she had a harder time focusing.
- Full disclosure can be liberating and productive in our lives. Maybe we need to share more of our secrets and histories in order to have a brighter future.
Literature and Life 