Authenticity in the Professional World Theme Analysis

“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 in clinical psychiatry at UCLA, she fought to keep the extent of her illness hidden from her colleagues and professors out of fear thst they’d stigmatize her and prevent her from taking on new research opportunities, or otherwise bar her from chasing her dreams of helping others. As Jamison charts her path toward transparency in both her personal and professional lives, she ultimately argues that individuals—especially women and especially people suffering from mental illness—should be able to feel like they can be their authentic selves in their work lives without fear of stigma or discrimination.

Over the course of An Unquiet Mind, Jamison demonstrates how difficult it is for those who have any degree of difference to hold their own in the professional world. She sheds light on the reasons why those very individuals the workplace threatens must be those whose authentic voices, ideas, and experiences are lifted up. Jamison writes about her early years as a researcher at UCLA with a mixture of fondness and lingering fear. Before leveling out thanks to the help of lithium (a mood-stabilizing medication), she writes, she “had developed mechanisms of self-control, to keep down the peals of singularly inappropriate laughter, and set rigid limits on my irritability. […] I learned to pretend I was paying attention or following a logical point when my mind was off chasing rabbits […] My work and professional life flowed.” While Jamison was able to tread water in her professional life and keep things flowing, underneath the surface, she was struggling greatly. Not only was Jamison desperate to hold things together to prove to herself that she was capable of staying on course professionally and academically, but also she was “terrified and deeply embarrassed” by the prospect of losing her job should someone realize the extent of her mania.

Throughout the rest of Jamison’s career, even after surviving a suicide attempt and finding solace in the stabilizing effects of lithium, she struggled to manage the gulf between the personal and the professional. At an American Psychiatric Association conference, Jamison gave a talk about lithium treatment—but, too afraid to share her own personal experience with the drug, she read a testimonial about the medication from a “patient,” never revealing that she was reading her own words and sharing with her colleagues her deepest secrets and feelings. While seeking tenure at UCLA, her alma mater, Jamison undertook an enormous amount of research work in order to prove to both her colleagues and herself that she could keep up with her “sane” counterparts on the faculty, and she describes this period of uncertainty in her life as “high-pressure” yet lonely. In spite of all her concerns for her professional future, she had next to no one she felt comfortable talking to about her specific struggles.

Jamison’s assorted anecdotes demonstrate her internalized need to hide the truth, outperform her “normal” colleagues and coworkers in order to prove herself worthy and capable, and ignore the advantage of firsthand experience with the very struggles and illnesses she was studying. All of these struggles show how societal stigma creates the sense that one cannot be fully authentic in one’s professional life if one is at all different from the norm. Jamison finally felt emboldened to pull back the curtains on her own experience of mental illness—and her family history of manic-depressive illness—when working with a Danish psychiatrist named Mogens Schou during an APA conference. As Mogens opened up about his family history of mood disorders and his academic work on tracing the heredity of such disorders, Jamison felt “trapped, but also relieved” as she opened up to the man about her personal life. Schou immediately and “aggressively” urged Jamison to use her own experiences in her private research and public writing and teaching efforts. There is an overwhelming sense of relief as Jamison describes feeling—for the first time in her professional life—a sense of openness, a lessening of stigma, and permission to be her authentic self.

Kay Redfield Jamison is a lauded professional who has held prestigious positions at UCLA, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and the Johns Hopkins Mood Disorders Center. Still, she has had to fight against people—often men—who dismissed her as soon as she revealed that she suffered from manic-depressive illness, even after she’d learned how to reliably manage the effects of her disorder. Jamison views the writing and publishing of An Unquiet Mind as an opportunity to break down the stigma surrounding manic-depressive illness within the workplace, ultimately suggesting that sufferers of the disorder should be afforded the same opportunities for authenticity, transparency, and self-assurance in the workplace as their non-affected counterparts.