An Unquiet Mind Themes

In An Unquiet Mind, Kay Redfield Jamison tells the story of her life—a life which has been affected since her adolescence by the constant presence and pressure of what she calls manic-depressive illness, a mental illness now most commonly known as bipolar disorder. As a mentally-ill person, Jamison wrestles with what “madness” truly means—she investigates the difference between the brain and the mind, the link between bipolar disorder and creativity, and the unlikely…

Kay Redfield Jamison is adamant about the fact that, without the mood-stabilizing drug lithium, she would likely not have survived the debilitating waves of mania and depression brought on by her bipolar disorder (which she calls manic-depressive illness). By the same token, however, Jamison admits that medicine is not the only reason she has been able to survive in the face of her illness: “love as sustainer, as renewer, and as protector,” she…

“My major concerns in discussing my illness […] have tended to be professional in nature,” writes Kay Redfield Jamison in the concluding pages of An Unquiet Mind. Throughout the book, as Jamison writes of her struggles with manic-depressive illness (or bipolar disorder, as it’s now more commonly called), she entwines her struggles with mania and depression with her struggles to advance in the worlds of medicine and academia. Throughout Jamison’s undergraduate, masters, and doctorate training…