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87d2a97
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The great imaginative artists have always sailed "in the wind's eye," and brought back with them words or sounds or images to "counterbalance human woes." That they themselves were subject to more than their fair share of these woes deserves our appreciation, understanding, and very careful thought."
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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4bcd1c1
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Circadian rhythms are implicated in some of the symptoms of depression, such as early awakening and diurnal variation in mood. The possible importance of the circadian system in its pathogenesis is suggested by the capacity of experimental alterations in the timing of sleep and wakefulness to alter clinical state." Biological rhythms range in frequency from milliseconds to months or years. Most rhythmic disturbances identified in the sympto..
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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3a5dd3f
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Americans really believe that the past is past," he writes. "They do not care to know that the past soaks the present like the light of a distant star. Things that are over do not end. They come inside us, and seek sanctuary in subjectivity. And there they live on, in the consciousness of individuals and communities." The forward thrust of exuberance, like closure, risks leaving behind an essential past."
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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c7617ff
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my curiosity and temperament had taken me to places I was not really able to handle emotionally,
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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76d6c25
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Vincent van Gogh, for one, wrote that his exuberant mood propelled not just his art but his speech: "There are moments," he said, "when I am twisted by enthusiasm or madness or prophecy, like a Greek oracle on the tripod. And then I have great readiness of speech.")"
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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5162c06
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Brian imaging studies conducted while a person is listening to music show that there are increases in cerebral blood flow in the same reward areas of the brain that are active when food, sex, or highly addictive drugs are involved. (Music may also, like other inducers of positive mood, decrease activity in those regions of the brain associated with negative emotions, such as anxiety or revulsion.)
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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80abc88
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But if love is not the cure, it certainly can act as a very strong medicine. As John Donne has written; it is not so pure and abstract as one might once have thought and wished, but it does endure and it does grow.
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love
medicine
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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06c9803
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The man's true life, for which he consents to live," wrote Robert Louis Stevenson, "lies altogether in the field of fancy. The clergyman, in his spare hours, may be winning battles, the farmer sailing ships, the banker reaping triumph in the arts: all leading another life, plying another trade from what they chose....For no man lives in the external truth, among salts and acids, but in the warm, phantasmagoric chamber of his brain, with the..
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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2d8367a
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Later, after Christmas carols and a nightcap of mulled ale in front of the fire, Mole reflects on how much he has missed the warmth and security of what he once had known, all of those "friendly things which had long been unconsciously a part of him."
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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ac14173
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To be sure," wrote Hugo Wolf, "I appear at times merry and in good heart, talk, too, before others quite reasonably, and it looks as if I felt, too, God knows how well within my skin. Yet the soul maintains its deathly sleep and the heart bleeds from a thousand wounds."
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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001642f
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In a state of exuberance, judgment is put on hold-but is not turned off completely. In hypomania judgment is napping, but still wakes up periodically to check things out. In mania, judgment is out like a light.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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3a1100b
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People who aren't as exuberant as you are get really irritated with you.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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a6244b1
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Exuberance, Cheng makes clear, is an indispensable part of his scientific life. "It keeps me alive. I like to have fun, I don't like boredom. Exuberance is necessary, you have to have enthusiasm. Any kind of work involves a lot of tedium, menial tasks, boring tasks. Exuberance allows you to see beyond, to see the goal. You need that kind of emotional makeup to push through the work, to pursue really difficult things. Exuberance stops you fr..
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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5661806
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I have suffered from exuberance, from being scattered, a lack of focus," he says. Conflicting enthusiasms caused him to switch scientific fields several times, from high-energy astrophysics to space physics, to particles and fields, and finally to planetary science."
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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5909c59
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Creative and manic thinking are both distinguished by fluidity and by the capacity to combine ideas in ways that form new and original connections. Thinking in both tends to be divergent in nature, less goal-bound, and more likely to wander about or leap off in a variety of directions. Diffuse, diverse, and leapfrogging ideas were first noted thousands of years ago as one of the hallmarks of manic thought. More recently, the Swiss psychiatr..
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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d6c26d8
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Both individuals who are manic and those who are writers, when evaluated with neuropsychological tests, tend to combine ideas or images in a way that "blurs, broadens, or shifts conceptual boundaries," a type of thinking known as conceptual overinclusiveness. They vary in this from normal subjects and from patients with schizophrenia. Researchers at the University of Iowa, for example, have shown that "both writers and manics tend to sort i..
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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772a14a
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Discovery, however divine or intoxicating, is just one aspect of scientific exuberance, however. Science is also driven by curiosity and an enthusiastic restlessness, hastened forward by a drive to explore, a desire to put together the pieces of some pattern of nature. The diversity of scientific inquiry is spectacular, and it is often the most exuberant scientists, the ones who possess the greatest capacity to be easily excited, who pursue..
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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d55fb20
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the exuberant are easily engaged. And exuberance is, in its very effusiveness, liable to misconstruction and suspicion, often misinterpreted as sexual interest when none is intended, or as implying a more sustained emotional commitment than is warranted by the high spirits that, however persuasive, may prove to be transient or directed in any number of places.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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c9659e2
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Cocaine, hashish, opium, Ecstacy: all seduce with the promise of rapture or exuberance-and then they collect.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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ec3838c
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The fates and character of the rhyming tribe often employ my thoughts when I am disposed to be melancholy. There is not, among all the martyrologies that ever were penned, so rueful a narrative as the lives of the poets.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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ee30a88
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The review of studies of seasonal patterns for peak months of occurrence for episodes of mania and depression indicates that there is a consistency of findings despite the methodological problems intrinsic to such research.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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b6928a3
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An exuberant temperature by no means leads inevitably, or even usually, to shallowness, but the potential is there. Subtleties and sustained thought can be lost in a swirl of vivacious moods and energies, just as monomaniacal enthusiasm can limit awareness of and sensitivity to the perspective, needs, and contributions of other people.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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a5f3334
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I have plotted Lombroso's findings in figure 4-3, and it can be seen that he found peaks of productivity in the late spring and early fall.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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d191b46
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The exuberant brain is a hopping, electric place, a breeding ground for both invention and rashness. It is by nature impatient, certain, and high on itself; inclined to action rather than reflection; overpromising; and susceptible to dangerous rushes of adrenaline. The exuberant mind is also disinclined to detail, error prone, and vulnerable to seduction. All people, said Walter Bagehot, are most credulous when they are most happy; for some..
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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0832d19
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The springtime peak of productivity that is shown in the works of many writers and artists, as well as by those in both Lombroso's study and my own, fits with popular conceptions about the blossoming forth of life during springtime. But how do these findings make sense in light of the striking peaks for severe depressive episodes, and suicide itself, during these same months? And why should so many artists and writers have another peak of p..
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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d702d9c
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Exuberance draws people together and primes them to act boldly; it warrants that the immediate world is safe for exploration and enjoyment and creates a vivifying climate in which a group can rekindle its collective mental and physical energies if depleted by setback, stress, or aggression. It answers despair with hope: "How I long for a little ordinary human enthusiasm," wrote John Osborne in Look Back in Anger. "Just enthusiasm-that's all..
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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24ee0b0
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The merrier the heart, alleged Burton, the longer the life. Modern science tends to support his contention: positive emotions such as joy act as breathers from stress and in doing so they help to restore physical and psychological health after draining or stressful times.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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f70a8ac
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lqd `tqdt bSdq fy wqt mn l'wqt 'n hnk kmy@ mHdd@ mn l'lm yjb 'n ymr bh kl nsn fy hdhh lHy@
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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eac4518
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The combination of curiosity and joy so characteristic of scientific work calls to mind the galumphing quality of exuberant play: watching, chasing, an idea first up one path and then down another, tussling with competitors, and flat-out exhilaration in the chase. Creative science and play are fun; they promise the unexpected.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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de5d667
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For as long as I can remember, I was frighteningly, although often wonderfully, beholden to moods.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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23551f9
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My manias, at least in their early and mild forms, were absolutely intoxicating states that gave rise to great personal pleasure, an incomparable flow of thoughts, and a ceaseless energy that allowed the translation of new ideas into papers and projects. Medications not only cut into these fast-flowing times, they also brought with them seemingly intolerable side effects.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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407a063
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generals outrank colonels who, in turn, outrank majors and captains and lieutenants, and everyone, but everyone, outranks children. Within the ranks of children, boys always outrank girls. One way of grinding this particularly irritating pecking order into the young girls was to teach them the old and ridiculous art of curtsying.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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7be3181
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My thinking, far from being clearer than a crystal, was tortuous. I would read the same passage over and over again only to realize that I had no memory at all for what I had just read. Each book or poem I picked up was the same way. Incomprehensible. Nothing made sense.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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879116a
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I have no idea how I managed to pass as normal in school, except that other people are generally caught up in their own lives and seldom notice despair in others if those despairing make an effort to disguise the pain.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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95032c1
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My mind was flying high that day, courtesy of whatever witches' brew of neurotransmitters God had programmed into my genes...
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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96af80b
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Named for his smooth and slithery essence, the Oyster was a senior professor: he was patronizing, smug, and had all of the intellectual and emotional complexity of, as one might expect, a small mollusk. He thought of women in terms of breasts, not minds, and it always seemed to irritate him that most women had both.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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973c58c
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I was late to understand that chaos and intensity are no substitute for lasting love, nor are they necessarily an improvement on real life... Volatility and passion, although often more romantic and enticing, are not intrinsically preferable to a steadiness of experience and feeling about another person (nor are they incompatible).
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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1aef748
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The force that through the green fuse drives the flower," wrote Dylan Thomas,"
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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56149b5
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Madness, on the other hand, most certainly can, and often does, kill love through its mistrustfulness, unrelenting pessimism, discontents, erratic behavior, and, especially, through its savage moods. The sadder, sleepier, slower, and less volatile depressions are more intuitively understood and more easily taken in stride. A quiet melancholy is neither threatening nor beyond ordinary comprehension; an angry, violent, vexatious despair is bo..
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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ba77246
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Recklessness springs naturally from overoptimism. Left to its own highly persuasive devices, exultant mood will nearly always trump rational thought. It is in the amalgam of fever and reason that genius lies. Passions are like fire and water, observed the journalist Sir Roger L'estrange more than three hundred years ago: they are good servants but poor masters. Passion kept on a loose bit serves its master far better than if it is left unbr..
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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65fd6d8
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It is well that war is so terrible: we should grow too fond of it.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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6c4531b
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Manic-depression is a disease that both kills and gives life. Fire, by its nature, both creates and destroys.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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8870637
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Well, there never was anything he could say, that's the funny thing. It was all the stupid, desperately optimistic, condescending things he didn't say that kept me alive; all the compassion and warmth I felt from him that could not have been said; all the intelligence, competence, and time he put into it; and his granite belief that mine was a life worth living. He was terribly direct, which was terribly important, and he was willing to adm..
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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5d32b75
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Two other patients were waiting for their doctors, which only added to my sense of indignity and embarrassment at finding myself with the roles reversed--character building, no doubt, but I was beginning to tire or all the opportunities to build character at the expense of peace, predictability, and a normal life.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |