Kay Redfield Jamison: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Mood and Madness

Dear Patient, welcome back, I hope you'll have a nice Easter and your chocolate eggs won't fall off of your cuckoo's nest. However, before sprinkling lithium on girls and getting down to clean the house of all the dementia of winter, let me talk about an "unashamedly honest" memoir of manic depression, namely, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Mood and Madness by Kay Redfield Jamison.

Manic depression, which is also called bipolar disorder, is a mental illness in which the patient experiences cyclical periods of mania and depression. The characteristics of mania are heightened and accelerated thinking and speaking, sudden and extreme enthusiasm for countless new ideas, lavish spending of money, energetic and passionate behaviour to the point of exhausting others, lack of sleep, rage, irritability, losing control over one's temper. However, by the time the patient should get down to work on his/her thousands of new ideas, depression takes over, and with it all of its numbing symptoms: fatigue, lack of motivation, loss of sexual desire, disturbance in concentration, tiredness, obsession with death, suicidal thoughts, inability to see the future and hope, and in most severe cases, delusions and hallucinations.

It is this sickness from which the writer of the memoir suffers. Jamison tells about her first symptoms and encounters with this disorder, her unwillingless to recognize that something is wrong, her refusal to take the medicine, all of the ups and downs of her illness in an honest and profound way. The main problem, as she wrote, is that "no pill can help me deal with the problem of not wanting to take pills;" that is, those suffering from manic depressive disorder refuse to take the medicine that would save their lives. Why is that? First, because of the side effects: nausea, vomiting, lack of coordination, torpid senses and feelings, depressed spirit, inability to read long texts, mental fatigue, etc. Secondly, it holds back all the psychotic zeal of the maniac periods, which seems as if the patient were deprived of his/her fountain of creativity and innovation. But there's a third reason, which might be the most difficult to break for psychological reasons: the fear that if lithium doesn't work either, the patient loses his/her last hope. However, Jamison had to learn the hard way that taking lithium is a must; an unsuccessful suicide attempt made her realize that she can't survive without taking her medicine.

The peculiar thing about the author is that she herself is a victim and a doctor of manic depression at the same time. She has always been interested in medicine, but, strangely, she didn't recognized her own symptoms when studying about psychiatry. Later, she decides to found a department for treating mentally ill people at UCLA (from where she graduated). She also successfully participates in writing medical essays and articles and attending conferences dealing with mental illnesses. Of course, she was afraid that she wouldn't be granted a medical license because of her illness, but her competence and power to overcome her psychosis didn't let her down. What is more, soon after the publication of her memoir, she was added to the list of best American doctors.

The two things that helped Jamison in her gravest periods of depression and mania are art and love. When researching about manic depression, she found out that several of the most famous composers and writers of were suffering from the same illness; for example, Lord Byron, from whom the quotation at the beginning of the book is cited. As far as love is considered, even though the author wrote that "no amount of love can cure madness or unblacken one's dark moods," she does admit that it was love that brought her back to life after the most severe and hopeless periods of depression; it was love that let her see the light in the chasm of blackness and what kept her going when she thought she has lost all her will to live.

Jamison's memoir is undoubtedly a worthwhile read. It opens the reader's mind and lets him/her into her own, allowing a glimpse of golden associations to come to life. It helps the reader understand that just because someone is insane, it doesn't mean that they are incurable and unsuitable for life. It doesn't mean that they are not human and don't have a right to live like normal people. On the other hand, they might see things that sane people couldn't even imagine, and into which they might gain and insight if they approach the mentally ill with patience and empathy.

Jean Rhys: Wide Sargasso Sea

Hey there, chirping cuckoo, welcome back to the Asylum. This week's dose of letters is provided by Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, a novel that serves as a backstory for Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. In this novel, the reader can gain a profound insight about how Thornsfield's "madwoman in the attic," Rochester's wife, the Jamaican creole Antoinette Cosway ended up in England. Even though the writer's style can't compare to the gripping, Victorian original, the book is certainly a useful reading for anyone who is fond of Jane Eyre and is curious about the gloomy secret of Thornfield.

What makes this novel credible and effective is the narrative technique. Namely, the story starts with Antoinette telling about her days of adolescence in Jamaica and her mother's going mad. Part II is narrated by Rochester before and after about his wedding with Antionette (whom he later christens Bertha), with a small intermezzo told by the wife. Finally, Part III takes place in Thornfield, by the time Antoinette has become the "madwoman in the attic," and is told by her nurse and herself. This fragmanted structure underpins the plot because the contrast in the tone and voice of the characters also uncovers the differences in their mental state. Whereas in Part I Antoinette is merely a witness of what she will have to endure and writes in a slightly inconsistent and confusing way, in Part II Rochester can see the signs of inherited peculiarity in her eyes and writes in a coherent an easily understandable manner. It is through his eyes that we can see how the girl goes mad, as a result of which the man's love turns into hatred. By the time the narration switches back to Antoinette in Part III, her sanity is completely lost. She doesn't believe that she is indeed in England, and she perceives the house as a "cardboard box."

The transformation of Rochester's and the "mad girl's" relationship also portrays the process of Antoinette's falling to dementia in a realistic way. At first Rochester seems to love her unconditionally, begging her not to leave him when she wants to call off the wedding. However, later they exchange roles; it is Antoinette who loves Rochester and the man wants to escape. But his strong hatred, anger for being deceived, and desire for revenge keeps her beside the mad woman, hindering her from even the hope of a happy life: "She is mad, but mine, mine."

It is also remarkable how traits of Jane Eyre have been woven into the plot. For example, we learn that the house of Antoinette's family burnt down, and this memory later led her to set fire on Thornfield. We can hear the madwoman's thoughts and pictures of her troubled mind right before the tragedy. And, knowing the premises and her motives, it's not so hard to understand her anymore. Perhaps that is the biggest shot of the whole novel: by turning the point of view upside down, by taking a temporal circle, it manages to evoke empathy and compassion in the reader towards a character who was depicted as an obstacle of the happiness of our beloved Jane Eyre.

Susanna Kaysen: Girl, Interrupted

Welcome back, dear inmate, I hope this new piece of interruption will not cause any permanent damage in your mind. The subject of this week's post is the book Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen. The autobiographical novel gives a credible account about the author's experiences with her mental illness and about her staying in McLean Psychiatric Hospital.

The first thing worth taking a closer look at is the title itself. Not only is the title interrupted by a comma in the middle, but the whole narration is fragmanted, sometimes underpinned, other times contradicted by the official documents about the protagonist's health state. The title also refers to the 18-month interruption spent at a mental hospital at the beginning of Kaysen's adult life. Furthermore, she admits to have an obsession with tunnels, the tunnels of the asylum, and her notion about "the world [having] been reduced to a narrow, throbbing tunnel." Tunnels connect two separate places by interrupting both of them, and someone who goes into a tunnel is surrounded by darkness, having the illusion of going somewhere but without any idea about what's on the other side. The life of the patients is also interrupted by regular "checks" of the staff, in every 5-15-30 seconds, even at night. They even contemplate whether certain actions (like sex) could fit between two interruptions. The metaphor of interruption also appears in the arrangement of the room in the hospital. Whereas the room of the staff are on the right side, the patients live on the left, lunatic side of the building.

The protagonist is diagnosed with personality disorder, which she connects to her feminists viewpoints. According to the official documents, this illness is "most commonly diagnosed with women," and its symptoms, such as "compulsive promiscuity," instability of self-image, or binge eating are also associated with female behaviour. Kaysen supports her opinion by stating that these things wouldn't be considered problematic in case of a man.

The author describes her mental instability by a variety of pictures and methods. For example, like Charlotte in The Yellow Wallpaper, she also has a problem with patterns: "When I looked at these things, I saw other things within them." Likewise, her complicated relationship with her body also illustrates her troubled mind. She depicts her tongue as "a vast foreign object in [her] mouth," and she questions her own existence and animateness when she's scratching her wrist to make sure that her bones are there under her flesh, even though she can't see them. The intriguing thing about bones is, however, is that it's all that's left for the inmates of the mental institution, still it's the very same thing she can't find: "Our privacy, our liberty, our dignity: All of this was gone and we were stripped down to the bare bones of our selves." This proves that her lack of confidence concerns not only the reality of the outside world, but the reality of inner world as well.

The writer also successfully presents mental problems with a simile of physical illness. She writes that the intangible bundle of her thoughts is like the flue, because "the first thought triggers the whole circuit: [...] first a sore throat, then, inevitably, a stuffy nose and a cough." She underpins her reasons for self-mutilation, too, in relation to her precarious world view:  "I got a gruesome satisfaction from my sufferings. They proved my existence." 

Kaysen often laments the loss of time spent during interruptions. She knows that it's lost forever, still wants to know the amount of it, even in the case of such a trivial act like the pulling out of a teeth. It's crucial for her that in the darkness of doubts about herself and the whole world, at least time could be known to be real.

The book was adapted into a movie in 1999, starring Wynona Rider, Angelina Jolie, Whoopi Goldberg, and Brittany Murphy.