Next...Jamison makes an excellent case for the link between bipolar disorder and creativity. The methodology she uses tends to be dependent upon case studies of particular artists and the information available from their own writings as well as their family backgrounds and family lineage. It is a well-known fact that many of the psychiatric disorders have both a genetic and an environmental component. Jamison obviously is learned enough and has enough background in neuroscience and psychiatry, to be able to tie the information often gleaned separately in these fields, together in a more comprehensive whole. No, Jamison does not prove beyond a shadow of a doubt the concept that many writers/artists are plagued by bipolararity...but she sure makes a heck of a case for the previously surmised existence of a link! Her science information is impeccable, given what is known now at this particular time concerning manic-depression and the brain. In spite of having to use historical accounts and letters of family members, the artists themselves, and those in direct contact with these people...Jamison's analysis of their work and art, in conjunction with that historical writing, and using what is known now about this particular disorder in the brain is an phenomenal act of intelligent and scholarly writing. And it is well-written and not typical-boring textbook (or 'let's-slap-ourselves-on-the-back-in-congratulatory' professorial type) either! That's high praise on my part, since I cannot abide professors who pander their own writing (whether textbooks or journals) or write to their colleagues in as hard-to-understand professional jargon as possible, and then demand their poor students attempt to make sense of it (as well as line the professors pockets!) Cynical, aren't I?

I had seen and heard of Jamison's work before, but this was the first opportunity I had had to pick up one of her books. Since having not only two artistic grandfathers (one of whom fit the mold of those in this book) as well as having a good per cent of my own family history done (and being linked to some very famous depressives and manic depressives on both sides like Mary Todd Lincoln)...my interest has always been piqued by this theory. My first three years in college gave me a great background in British and American literature, and I remember reading William Blake and thinking 'this guy straddles the world between being one of the major prophetic poets, and being stark-raving loonie'!
Jamison really confirmed what I had previously thought by giving more background into the lives of these men and women. Plus she ties in the what is known about their placement into insane asylums and into their deaths at their own hands (as well as dependence upon alcohol or other drugs to relieve their depression...they rarely wanted to ease their mania which in itself is another confirmation of their own recognizance of their problems).

Jamison watches the speculation, that I find abhorent in historical research. She makes no claims that this is the final word on these people...she cannot. She knows and admits this. But her immense work in this area provides significant input into the lives and works of these men. It makes all of us, whether in the medical world, the educational world, or the artistic world appreciate the art and writings of these men even more because of the knowledge of what they went through.

Karen L. Sadler,
Science Education,
University of Pittsburgh

54 of 61 found the following review helpful:


Who Are You To Claim You're Normal?  Nov 06, 2000 By Gordon Hilgers
It's long been considered a fact of life that seems to go with the territory that creative people are not only "abnormal" or "outside the mainstream"--but that many of them are just plain loopy. Doubtless, some of that kind of thinking owes a big debt to the narrowing--and often stereotypical--definitions of "normal" in American society. However, the gradual merging of biology and psychology over the last two decades shows a scientifically verifiable correlation between the "artistic temperament" and "manic-depressive illness."

Want to know more about what psychological researchers have been discovering about this long-acknowledged link since the Prozac Revolution? Kay Redfield Jamison, a psychologist at Johns Hopkins, presents as "evidence" a series of recent statistical studies of creative men and women that reveal a definite relationship between the long-ellusive and hard-to-diagnose illness and the personality traits researchers suspect are inherent in successful creative activity. While that's not anything particularly new or groundbreaking--the dry opening chapters are perhaps a little too technical for the information Jamison seeks to convey to a general audience--"Touched With Fire" may help to dispel some of the confusion among "normal" family members and friends who are often too quick to label the artists and writers among them as "messed up" or "weird" or "skitzy."

Once Jamison gets down to the brass tacks and begins to present details from specific cases--Byron, Van Gogh, Melville and Woolf--the book presents a fascinating gathering of poems, notes, letters and testimonies that could shatter the idea that history's most creative people were also exceptionally well-behaved and mannerly. The fact they weren't is testimony, of course, to art's ability to sculpt an illusion around its creator, but the revelation does more than that. After all, still-murky distinctions between the artistic temperament and insanity bring up ethical questions regarding the ultimate meaning and direction of normality in America--who is to be included in the "Pantheon of the Normal" and who is to be barred at the door--but Jamison merely glosses over this area. Since social morays often change the meaning of "normality" over time--and since what we consider "normal" today was by no means "normal" 200 years ago--studies of this relationship that limit themselves to diagnostic criteria and subjective symptoms are bound to be far too limited to provide even the most superficial understanding of how creativity interacts with madness and other discomfiting developments.

One of the book's quirks is that Jamison--doubtless due to scant information--limits the subject's medicinal applications to the effects of lithium on creativity and creative individuals with bipolar illness. What she doesn't tell her readers is that the discovery of Prozac and other SSRIs has advented a new age in the treatment and understanding of all forms of depression. In fact, depression seems to have distinct components in many cases that psychologists never understood until the unintended effects of Prozac revealed them. Prozac has been found to have a positive effect on obsessive/compulsive behavior, Tourette's Syndrome and even in cases that had previously been misdiagnosed as schizophrenia. Depression has been found to cut a far wider swath through the psyche than researchers have previously acknowledged--even to themselves.

Furthermore, Jamison completely omits--perhaps due to a dearth of research--possible linkages between the creative activities of writers and artists that may someday be found to precipitate mania and depression. Writing and art supposedly clear the mind. What happens to the artist, poet or writer who inadvertantly clears--or, to put it into the technical vernacular, "kindles"--the mind a little too much? How do the stresses of the craft mitigate the illnesses we associate with creator/victims? How does the impression of a powerful stimuli--a trauma, drug or alchol use, or the "high" of creating a powerful poem or painting--set up patterns in psychic response and in the process of how we relate to less-powerful stimuli? Needless to say, we've got a long way to go before we completely understand manic-depressive illness and its strange tendency to appear in the psyches of creative individuals. Jamison's book might be entertaining and comforting to those of us who have to live with the disease--even if parts of it parse like a research paper--but we're only scratching the surface of something that deserves much more in-depth investigation than we've undertaken.

39 of 44 found the following review helpful:


An informative and curiously interesting book.  Dec 24, 2000 By Betti Trapp
Kay Redfield Jamison writes with a strong knowledge of the subject. In this book, she researches the question of artistic talent, creativity, and it's relationship to manic depressive illness. The facts are stunning. I was unaware that such a strong link existed, but it does make sense. Famous authors, poets, and painters are explored, and their struggle with this very debilitating disease is illuminated in these pages. Manic depressive illness is portrayed as a double edged sword, one that destroys even as it creates. Ms. Jamison researches the question of treatment, and whether or not treating/eradicating manic depressive illness does not also involve the stifling of creativity. Some famous authors are even known to have said that their suffering is a part of who they are, and without it, they could not create. The forms of treatment are also explored, and the pros and cons of Lithium and other medication discussed. This author has done her homework, and this book will inform and delight anyone interested in this subject. The only reason I gave it four stars instead of five is because the statistics (though necessary) get boring.

26 of 29 found the following review helpful:


An excellent book  Nov 10, 1999 By Azriel (leaf@mail.dbcity.com)
I don't think Dr. jamison did anything irresponsable here. Nor did I find her grasping at scientific straws as I've heard it implied. My sister who read the book brought up the concern that I read here several times, which is, how did Dr. Jamison know these ppl were bipolar? She never claimed absolutely that they were. She did however point out very suspicious and in my opinion serious patterns and events that matched what we now know of bipolar. The illness is not *that* hit and miss. I think the ethiccal questions she raised were important. No, every bipolar is not an artistic genius, though overall bipolars are *more* creative than non bipolars. What happens to this creativity when we cure bipolar disorder? It's a good question. And a good book. People's personal distaste for or fear of mental illness notwithstanding, any open mind will find it's not making false claims, or glorifying pain. It's just examining some questions that should be brought to light.

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