Turncoat
Posts: 129
Joined: Dec. 2007
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| Quote (Reciprocating Bill @ Feb. 29 2008,07:26) | | Quote (Louis @ Feb. 29 2008,06:42) | | Bipolar disorders (1, 2 or cyclothymia or whatever they are calling them nowadays) and clinical depression are indeed mental illnesses but they don't always render the patient a window licking unfunctioning ambulatory vegetable. |
Kay Jamison's autobiographical An Unquiet Mind (which I read ~10 years ago), Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament and Exuberance: The Passion for Life go directly to these questions with respect to bipolar illness.
An Unquiet Mind is a good read (I haven't read the others). Jamison is one of the world's foremost authorities on the illness, has bipolar illness herself - and resisted pharmacological treatment for years because it was during early phases of her manic episodes (what she called her "white manias" - distinct from her subsequent inevitable "black manias") that she was most productive.
Diagnosis with the illness sometimes raises dilemmas for the individual, who may value elements of their high moods and must also confront the reality that their affect often can't be uncritically "trusted" - an enthusiasm, attraction, interest etc. may be the leading edge of a hypomanic mood and not "genuine." I knew a guy who would write plays, paint, compose and sing during hypomanic periods - all quite unproductively, because he couldn't finish projects. His diagnosis was a severe blow, because it undercut core elements of his identity and self-esteem that revolved around his creativity and sometimes seemingly boundless energy. He also struggled with the fact that, during the peak of his manic periods, there were psychotic elements to his thinking that he valued. He would, at those highest moods, walk to the beach and sit before the surf, which he believed "imparted information" to him that was unique and quite indescribable. He recognized the unreality of that phenomenon at other times, but his extremely high moods impaired his judgment about the quality of his thinking when active. |
My undergrad degree is in psychology, and I worked on a psych ward for a time, and I was married to a psychotherapist. Now middle-aged and unmarried, I find that a hugely disproportionate fraction of available women about my age are trauma survivors -- usually child sexual abuse -- so I've read mostly about that awful stuff in recent years. But I have read An Unquiet Mind, and it's precisely the book I would recommend to anyone who wants to understand bipolar disorder. The story you tell is not uncommon.
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I never give them hell. I just tell the truth about them, and they think it's hell. — Harry S Truman
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