Kay Redfield Jamison - On Manic-Depression and Mood Disorders (8 books)

* Kay Redfield Jamison - On Manic-Depression and Mood Disorders (8 books)

KAY REDFIELD JAMISON (b. 1946) is an American clinical psychologist and writer whose work centers on mood disorders, and particularly bipolar disorder, which she has had since her early adulthood. Her eloquent writing on mental illness bridges art and medicine, the personal and the professional. She is the Dalio Professor in Mood Disorders and Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and an Honorary Professor of English at the University of St Andrews.

Her book MANIC-DEPRESSIVE ILLNESS (1990; second edition, 2007), co-authored with Frederick K. Goodwin, is considered a classic textbook on the disorder, hailed by both specialists and nonspecialists alike. It was the first text to comprehensively survey the massive body of evidence on the disorder and to assess its meaning for both clinician and scientist. It also vividly portrays the experience of manic-depressive illness from the perspective of patients, their doctors, and researchers.

In TOUCHED WITH FIRE: MANIC-DEPRESSIVE ILLNESS AND THE ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT (1993), Jamison reveals that many artists subject to exalted highs and despairing lows were in fact engaged in a struggle with manic-depressive illness. She discusses the biological foundations of the disease and applies what is known about the illness to the lives and works of some of the world's greatest artists including Lord Byron, Vincent Van Gogh, and Virginia Woolf. She further dissected the relationship between mania and creativity in ROBERT LOWELL: SETTING THE RIVER ON FIRE (2018), which was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist for Biography.

Jamison revealed her own anguished struggles with mania and severe depression in the memoir AN UNQUIET MIND (1995), in which she concludes: "I long ago abandoned the notion of a life without storms, or a world without dry and killing seasons. Life is too complicated, too constantly changing, to be anything but what it is. And I am, by nature, too mercurial to be anything but deeply wary of the grave unnaturalness involved in any attempt to exert too much control over essentially uncontrollable forces. There will always be propelling, disturbing elements, and they will be there until, as Lowell put it, the watch is taken from the wrist. It is, at the end of the day, the individual moments of restlessness, of bleakness, of strong persuasions and maddened enthusiasms, that inform one's life, change the nature and direction of one's work, and give final meaning and color to one's loves and friendships."

Among her other seminal works written for laypeople are NIGHT FALLS FAST: UNDERSTANDING SUICIDE (1999). Weaving together a historical and scientific exploration of the subject with personal essays on individual suicides, she brings not only her remarkable compassion and literary skill but also all of her knowledge and research to bear on this devastating problem. This is a book that helps us to understand the suicidal mind, to recognize and come to the aid of those at risk, and to comprehend the profound effects on those left behind.

In her latest work, FIRES IN THE DARK: HEALING THE UNQUIET MIND (2023), Jamison writes about psychotherapy, what makes a great healer, and the role of imagination and memory in regenerating the mind. "Bring in the things you love in life," she writes. "Build an island that is of your own devising. Make it full of things that give you sustenance."
The following books are in ePub and/or PDF format as noted:

* An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods & Madness (Vintage, 2009) – ePub
* Exuberance: The Passion for Life (Knopf, 2004) – ePub
* Fires in the Dark: Healing the Unquiet Mind (Knopf, 2023) – ePub
* Manic-Depressive Illness, 2e [with F. Goodwin] (Oxford, 2007) – PDF
* Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide (Knopf, 1999) – ePub + PDF
* Nothing Was the Same: A Memoir (Knopf, 2009) – ePub
* Robert Lowell: Setting the River on Fire (Knopf, 2017) – ePub
* Touched with Fire (Free Press, 1993) – ePub + PDF
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