A Quiet Mind | Kay Redfield Jamison

I suppose nobody has a truly "quiet mind" to use Kay Redfield Jamison’s term—her’s is unquiet, actually—and an "unquiet mind," as is the title of her book, seems far more likely to exist than does a truly quiet mind. Yet I know myself that there are those whose minds are less quiet than others—that is to say, those who have a sort of noise in the head that makes it impossible to quiet down, to focus in and settle, to ever feel okay about the way things are.

An Unquiet Mind; a Memoir of Mood and Madness is Redfield-Jamison’s own very personal account of her struggles with manic depression; and while there have been other, surely many, self-revelatory or confessional works on the subject (like the crop of incest books that were popping up years ago, and now, the books on cutting, proving that even mental health issues have their trends, their ups, their downs, or perhaps, it all depends on the public and their caring at that patricular moment. Who knows?), Jamison’s book merits reviewing again, or reminding readers of its existence, even though it is several years old, because for what it is, it is one of the best books in the field.

Jamison is forthcoming about the most personal of details, as a doctor herself, she describes in vivid and brave detail her struggle to hide her manic depression because of her fear (and reasonable fear) that her medical license could be taken away from her or she could be found "incapable" of dealing with patients. This, after having made medicine her whole life, was not something Jamison could ever afford to have happen.

Like any manic depressive, Jamison takes us rapid-fire through her cycles of quick and high energy, in which she is incredibly focused and seemingly able to hold all the threads together and to keep things moving along, requiring almost no sleep, functioning at what appears to be a very high level, but also acting in a way that doctors including herself, would term "manic, obsessive, compulsive"—unable to let things go, unable to see the imbalance in her own life, and perhaps at times, the social inappropriateness of such behavior, and how much it gives away without perhaps her intending to give so much of herself away. Through behavior, through struggles with medication (mostly, not taking it, a cycle that many with chronic illness will go through—particularly any illness that affects the mind, seems to cause a sort of medication rebellion to a certain point.)

Article Author: Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti

Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti is a published writer in both the United States and Europe. She is widely known for her music commentary, particularly her writings about Bob Dylan about whom she runs a highly-trafficked site. …

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