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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| b6928a3 | 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. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| a5f3334 | 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. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| d191b46 | 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.. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 0832d19 | 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.. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| d702d9c | 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.. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 24ee0b0 | 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. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| f70a8ac | lqd `tqdt bSdq fy wqt mn l'wqt 'n hnk kmy@ mHdd@ mn l'lm yjb 'n ymr bh kl nsn fy hdhh lHy@ | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| eac4518 | 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. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| b565e79 | These include Philip Marshall Dale, Medical Biographies: The Ailments of Thirty-Three Famous Persons (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1952); Brian Dillon, The Hypochondriacs: Nine Tormented Lives (New York: Faber and Faber, 2010); Douglas Goldman et al., Retrospective Diagnoses of Historical Personalities as Viewed by Leading Contemporary Psychiatrists (Bloomfield, NJ: Schering Corporation, 1958); Kay Redfield Jamison, Touched wit.. | Claudia Kalb | ||
| de5d667 | For as long as I can remember, I was frighteningly, although often wonderfully, beholden to moods. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 23551f9 | 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. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 407a063 | 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. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 7be3181 | 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. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 879116a | 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. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 95032c1 | My mind was flying high that day, courtesy of whatever witches' brew of neurotransmitters God had programmed into my genes... | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 96af80b | 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. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 973c58c | 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). | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 1aef748 | The force that through the green fuse drives the flower," wrote Dylan Thomas," | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 56149b5 | 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.. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| ba77246 | 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.. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 65fd6d8 | It is well that war is so terrible: we should grow too fond of it. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 6c4531b | Manic-depression is a disease that both kills and gives life. Fire, by its nature, both creates and destroys. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 8870637 | 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.. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 5d32b75 | 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. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 1db4e19 | even though [my psychiatrist] understood mor than anyone how much I felt I was losing--in energy, vivacity, and originality--by taking medication, he never was seduced into losing sight of the overall perspective of how costly, damaging, and life threatening my illness was. He was at ease with ambiguity, had a comfort with complexity, and was able to be decisive in the midst of chaos and uncertainty. He treated me with respect, a decisive p.. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 4cfdb5b | Reading, which had been at the heart of my intellectual and emotional existence, was suddenly beyond my grasp. I was used to reading three or four books a week; now it was impossible. I did not read a serious work of literature or nonfiction, cover to cover, for more than ten years. The frustration and pain of this were immeasurable. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 1a5f905 | mn lmz`j 'Hynan rw'y@ lmsh`r w lslwkyt lqwy@ w lm`qd@ ytm khtzlh fy `brt tshkhySy@ hmd@ w blyd@. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 1588ee6 | He was not, it was clear, going to gaze meaningfully into my eyes over long dinners and fine wines, nor discuss literature and music over late-night coffee and port... Yet not once in the years we have been together have I doubted Richard's love for me, nor mine for him. Love, like life, is much stranger and far more complicated than one is brought up to believe. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 011df35 | lower dose, which, like the building codes in California that are designed to prevent damage from earthquakes, allowed my mind and emotions to sway a bit. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 5e3b089 | We all build internal sea walls to keep at bay the sadness of life and the often overwhelming forces within our minds. In whatever way we do this--through love, work, family, faith, friends, denial, alcohol, drugs, or medication--we guild these walls, stone by stone, over a lifetime. One of the most difficult problems is to construct these barriers of such a height and strength that one has a true harbor, a sanctuary away from crippling tur.. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| b0f10ea | bd't 'stmt` blmwsyq~ w lrswmt mjddan , bd't 'DHk mjddan , bd't 'ktb lsh`r mjddan. lylin Twyl@un w SbHt mbkr@ mn l`wTf lry'`@ j`ltny '`yd l`tqd, 'w 'tdhkr 'hmy@ lHss b'n '`ysh l'Hb w 'n 'Hb l'`ysh . | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| bf279bb | lzmn s`dny `l~ lnsyn, w lknh bmrr@in rhyb@ 'khdh wqth mn 'jl dhlk . | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 71cb3d3 | lqd stGrq l'mr sn@an kml@ fy njltr lj`ly 'drk 'nny knt fym mD~ 'mshy `l~ lm mktfy@an bmjrd mHwl@ lbq `l~ qyd lHy@ w tjnb l'lm bdlan mn lndmj lHqyqy fy lHy@. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| c2a42e2 | As the psychiatrist Kay Redfield Jamison writes, "There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that, compared to 'normal' individuals, artists, writers, and creative people in general are both psychologically 'sicker'--that is, they score higher on a wide variety of measures of psychopathology--and psychologically healthier (for example, they show quite elevated scores on measures of self-confidence and ego strength)" | Joshua Wolf Shenk | ||
| 00f5fde | fDwly w mzjy 'khdhny l~ 'mkn lm 'kn qdr@an `l~ wSwlh bmsh`ry . | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| bf55326 | Mood disorders , in addition to exhibiting seasonal patterns, frequently show pronounced diurnal rhythms as well. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 026174d | and increased energy) | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| fac3d7f | Her version of Lowell was not theirs, even when they were discussing the same symptoms; what to her was "mad" was to them another mark of Lowell's genius." | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 759ff9e | posthumous Piano Sonata in B-flat, D. 960. Its haunting, | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 847105d | 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." | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| c28d75d | ndm bd't 'sh`r bnfsy mjddan lm 'kn `l~ st`dd 'n 'khTr bkhsr@ lmzyd mn lwqt mthlm sbq. lHy@ lm t`d tstHq 'n 'khsrh . | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| a82b37b | lqd knt l'shy lGby@, w lmtfy'l@ by's, w lmtwD`@ lty lm yqlh, hy lty j`ltny `l~ qyd lHy@. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 104af7a | But, as I well knew, an understanding at an abstract level does not necessarily translate into an understanding at a day-to-day level. I have become fundamentally and deeply skeptical that anyone who does not have this illness can truly understand it. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 562b5d3 | When I am high I couldn't worry about money if I tried. So I don't. The money will come from somewhere; I am entitled; God will provide. Credit cards are disastrous, personal checks worse. Unfortunately, for manics anyway, mania is a natural extension of the economy. What with credit cards and bank accounts there is little beyond reach....During one spree in London I spent several hundred pounds on books having titles or covers that somehow.. | Kay Redfield Jamison |