June 26, 2025 • 37 mins
In An Unquiet Mind, renowned psychiatrist Kay Redfield Jamison shares her deeply personal struggle with bipolar disorder. This episode explores the highs of mania, the depths of depression, and the courage it takes to face both with honesty and grace.
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(00:00):
Welcome to The Deep Dive. We're the show that really gets
into the weeds of fascinating books and ideas, trying to pull
out the most important, maybe surprising, and yeah, sometimes
even funny bits of knowledge foryou.
And today we're plunging into a really, truly extraordinary
book. It's a memoir that honestly
shifted how a lot of people think about mental illness.
(00:22):
We're talking about An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jameson.
Right. It's this journey deep inside
the experience of manic depressive illness, what most
people now call bipolar disorder.
But the thing that makes this book such a landmark, it isn't
just the honesty, which is incredibly raw, it's who is
telling the story. Exactly.
Jemison isn't just describing the illness from the outside,
(00:44):
like as an observer. She's a highly respected
professor of psychiatry at JohnsHopkins University, a leading
expert. And she's a patient herself.
She lives with the very condition she studies.
Yeah, it's almost, it's like having this brilliant surgeon
performing some kind of groundbreaking operation, right?
But at the same time, she's giving you a live first person
commentary of what it actually feels like to be the one on the
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table. That's it exactly.
That's the level of unique sort of dual insight we get here.
So our mission for you today is to offer a real shortcut into
understanding this incredibly complex world using her, well,
unparalleled perspective. We'll.
Explore her amazing journey, theinsights she gained not just
about her own mind, but really about the human condition
(01:27):
itself. And how these super personal
experiences shine a light on universal stuff, resilience,
self acceptance, the power of connection.
And yeah, we'll sprinkle in someunexpected facts and maybe, you
know, a touch of humor where it fits.
Because even deep dives need a little levity.
Definitely. And Jameson herself, she just
nails the feeling of mania, thatdisorienting but strangely
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compelling thing with this quote, it pulls you right in.
Let's hear it. When you're high, it's
tremendous. The ideas and feelings are fast
and frequent, like shooting stars, and you follow them until
you find better and brighter ones.
But somewhere this changes. The fast ideas are far too fast,
and there are far too many. Overwhelming confusion replaces
(02:09):
clarity. Memory goes humor and absorption
on friends faces are replaced byfear and concern.
Wow, Just hearing that quote, you get this visceral sense of
the the sheer roller coaster of it all and that voice, that
complete authenticity. That's why this book hit so
hard, wasn't it? Why it resonated with so many
people. Critics, readers, clinicians,
everyone. Absolutely.
(02:30):
So let's start where she starts,in what she calls the Wild Blue
Yonder, which is a great title for military childhood, right?
Perfect and this book, An Unquiet Mind wasn't just
published. It kind of exploded onto the
scene. Critics, other writers were
talking heavyweights like Pat Conroy Will.
They were just completely. They really were.
The reviews called it things like riveting, stunning,
(02:51):
piercingly honest, brave, insightful.
It was almost immediately seen as a classic.
Yeah, Will self, I think it was in the Observer, he said.
It cuts through the dead jargon and detached observations of
psychiatric theory and practice to create a fiery, passionate,
authentic account. Of the devastation and
exaltation, the blindness and illumination of the psychotic
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experience. That phrase, fiery, passionate,
authentic. That's key.
She wasn't clinical. She wasn't detached.
No, she lived it. She embodied it.
It wasn't just a description. It felt like a testament,
something that genuinely changedthe conversation around mental
illness. Completely.
And, you know, part of what makes her story feel so human,
so relatable, despite the extreme experiences, is her
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background, her foundation. Right, that military childhood,
constant change was just the norm.
She moved so much. Think about it.
Florida, Puerto Rico, California, Tokyo.
Washington twice. Washington twice by the time she
was in fifth grade. That's just incredible.
New schools, new houses, constantly making and losing
friends. That must have been tough.
You'd think so, but despite all that upheaval, her parents,
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especially her mother, really worked hard to keep things as
secure, warm and constant as possible.
She calls it an amulet. Yeah, like this protective
charm, right? A source of warmth, friendship,
confidence that acted as a buffer against future
unhappiness. It's a really powerful image.
It makes you wonder how important that baseline
stability was for her later on, when her own mind became so
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unstable, like a reserve she could draw on.
It seems critical. And the family dynamics within
this moving bubble were pretty interesting, too.
Her older brother, three years older.
He was the steadiest. Her rock, basically.
She calls him her staunch ally. Smart, fair, self confident.
He provided extra protection like a built in best friend and
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bodyguard. Sounds like it a real anchor in
that constantly shifting world. But then the relationship with
her sister, who's only 13 monthsolder, that was much more
complex. Yeah, described as the truly
beautiful one, but also having afierce temper, these very black
and passing moods. And she really disliked the
conservative military lifestyle.And a bit of a rebel, then.
Definitely hated high school, skipped class to hang out at the
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Smithsonian or the Army Medical Museum, or just smoke and drink
with friends. And she apparently really
resented Jameson, seeing her as the fair haired one who found
things like school and friends easy.
Classic sibling stuff, maybe, but with a darker edge.
Her sisters seem to find the world harsh and difficult.
It's fascinating how two kids inthe same environment can have
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such different takes. Jameson herself wonders if maybe
her own serious mood issues surfacing later meant she got a
longer, more, you know, wonderful childhood that her
sister missed out on. Giving her that solid base, that
amulet you mentioned which maybeher sister didn't quite get in
the same way, it really underscores how early emotional
foundations can build resilience.
It really does. And contrasting with the
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sister's struggles, you have thefather.
He sounds like, well, quite something.
Oh yeah, magically involved abelian.
Funny. Curious about almost every.
Just full of infectious enthusiasm, she says.
Snowflakes and clouds weren't just weather in his world, They
became events and characters. And when his moods were at high
tide, which looking back feels significant, the house would
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fill with music and beautiful jewelry might appear like a
moonstone ring or Ruby bracelets.
Signs that some grand pronouncement was coming.
Exactly. Sometimes it was this passionate
certainty that windmills were the only way to save the world,
or insisting the kids had to learn Russian because Russian
poetry was just so inexpressiblybeautiful in the original.
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Imagine your dad suddenly deciding Pushkin is essential
homework. That's intense, it's charming,
but you can also sort of see maybe a hint of that manic
style, single minded focus. Perhaps, and the best story, I
think, is the George Bernard Shaw one.
Oh yeah, tell that one. He reads that Shaw left money in
his will for a phonetic alphabetand specified Andracles and the
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Lion should be the first play translated right.
So her dad goes out and buys nearly 100 copies of Andracles
and the Lion and just starts handing them out to everyone.
He it's everyone in his flight path.
Just had to share the joy apparently. 100 copies.
That's that's dedication or something else?
It's wonderfully eccentric, but again, that expansive energy
feels familiar in the context ofthe book.
(07:15):
Totally and balancing this out you had her mother, the
persevering steadiness, the. Anchor Jameson credits her
survival through the years of pain and nightmare directly to
her mother's belief in seeing things through, her ability to
love and learn, listen and change.
She uses that lovely image of her mother being like a gentle
mother cat picking up a stray kitten by the scruff of its
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neck. Gently but firmly bringing her
back to safety, security, food protection.
That steady, unconditional love must have been a lifeline,
especially contrasting with the father's more unpredictable
tides. Absolutely.
And both parents were great about encouraging her interests.
Poetry, science, medicine. They seemed good at knowing when
something was just a phase versus a real passion.
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Which brings us to the sloth. The Sloth Saga This is
brilliant. Young Kay, prone to strong and
absolute passions, decides they desperately need a pet sloth.
And her mother, already running a small zoo with dogs, cats,
birds, fish, turtles, lizards, frogs, mice, was, shall we say,
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less than wildly enthusiastic. Understandably.
So the father comes up with thisgenius plan.
He tells her OK, make a detailedscientific and literary notebook
about sloths. Everything like diet, habitat.
Everything practical stuff, diet, living space, vet care,
but also poems about sloths, essays on what they meant to
her. Design A habitat for the house
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and go observe them at the zoo and take detailed notes.
If she did all that, then they'dconsider it.
Parental genius right there. They knew she was just in love
with the idea of a strange idea.Exactly.
And guess what happened when sheactually went to the National
Zoo to observe them? Let me guess, not quite as
exciting in reality. She found it utterly boring.
Declared there was anything moreboring than watching a sloth.
Other than watching cricket, perhaps.
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Or the House Appropriations Committee meetings on C-SPAN.
Huh. That's fantastic, But, you know,
thinking about it, does that kind of foreshadow the intense
but fleeting passions of mania? An early lesson in telling real
interest from, like, sheer fascination.
That's a great point. It's like a mini version of
those grand ideas that seem essential in the moment but then
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just evaporate. It shows that tendency was maybe
always there, just not pathologically so yet.
Right, but her interest in medicine, unlike sloths, did
stick. Age 12, she gets dissecting
tools, a microscope, Grey's Anatomy.
The classic textbook and the basement ping pong table that
became her lab. Dissecting frogs, fish, worms,
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turtles. Yep.
Apparently she only stopped whenshe moved up the evolutionary
ladder to a fetal pig. It's tiny snout and perfect
little whiskers finally did me in.
OK, so she had her limits, but still, that early fascination
with biology, with the body, it feels almost prophetic given
where her life went. Totally.
But this interest in the mind and its problems took a really
dark turn when she was 15. The trip to Saint Elizabeth's.
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Yeah, the federal psychiatric hospital in DC, She went with
her fellow candy stripers. And the bus ride over was.
Filled with nervous jokes, terribly insensitive
schoolgirlish remarks to cover their fear, The old taunt you'll
end up in Saint Elizabeth's, which is just a dark joke,
suddenly felt heavier. Even though she felt sane, she
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mentions these irrational fears started creeping in.
She remembered her own terrible temper, which scared her.
She called it the only crack in the otherwise vacuum sealed
casing of my behavior. A tiny crack she didn't
understand yet. Then they get there and the
grounds are beautiful, right? Old trees, big lawns, views of
the city. Deceptively serene, because
inside the Wards it was a different story.
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The dreadful reality of the sights and sounds and smells of
insanity. Just an overwhelming sensory
assault. And the head nurse tells her
there are 90 patients for each attendant 90.
Unbelievable. And when Jamison asks how they
manage and how staff protect themselves, the nurse says,
well, they have drugs, but sometimes it became necessary to
hose them down. Hose them down.
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It's just so brutal, dehumanizing.
What did that teach a 15 year old about how society viewed
madness then? That it was something to be
controlled by force, not understood, not treated with
compassion, just contained a chilling lesson, especially
given her own future. And the dayroom scene she
describes, bizarre clothes, pacing, strange laughter,
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screams, one woman standing likea stork, giggling.
Another who she thought must have been beautiful once just
braiding and unbraiding her hair, eyes darting everywhere.
It sounds terrifying, but Jameson says she was also
intrigued, somehow captivated. While the other girl stayed
back. She actually walked towards the
woman with the hair. Took some courage.
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She asked her why she was there.And the woman stared, then
explained to her parents had puta pinball machine inside her
head when she was 5. Red balls meant laugh.
Blue meant silence. Green meant multiply by three.
Wow. But there was another ball.
Yes, a mysterious silver ball that came through every few
days. So Jameson, ever the curious
one, asks, what does the silver ball mean?
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Nothing. The woman just looked at her
intently. Then her eyes went dead, stared
off into space, caught up in some internal world, Jameson
says. I never found out what the
silver ball meant. That unanswered question, it's
so haunting. It's more than just a glimpse of
madness. It's her first real taste of the
isolation, the private logic of psychosis, something she'd later
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understand from the inside. Yeah, that visit, those images,
they must have echoed terribly later on because her own illness
didn't just appear overnight. She talks about the onset being
gradual. Right from quick thought to
chaos. A slow and beautifully seductive
process. That's such a crucial point she
makes. It wasn't a sudden break.
It crept up on her. When she first joined the
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psychiatry faculty at UCLA, things seemed OK Lots of energy,
working hard, not sleeping much.Which, as she points out, is
tricky. Isn't it?
Lack of sleep is a symptom, but it also triggers mania, a
dangerous cycle. Exactly.
And then came what she calls theflights of the mind, that
initial phase of mania. Where she says it's tremendous
ideas like shooting stars. You feel charming, articulate,
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powerful. Yeah, ease, intensity, power,
well-being, financial omnipotence and euphoria.
It honestly sounds kind of amazing.
Almost like a superpower. Which explains why it's so hard
to let go of, right? Even knowing the crash is
coming, you can see the appeal, the seduction.
Totally. But then she says somewhere this
changes. The ideas get far too fast, far
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too many. Confusion replaces clarity.
Memory fails. And people's reactions change.
Friends look scared, not engaged.
Everything feels wrong. You become irritable, angry,
frightened, uncontrollable, trapped in the blackest caves of
the mind. It's like hitting the
accelerator and having it stick.You're just hurtling towards
disaster. And the fallout?
Devastating. Revoked credit cards, Bounced
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checks, Having to explain thingsat work.
Apologies. A ruined marriage mania might
erase some memory, she says, butit leaves these bitter
reminders. And those deep, haunting
questions, Which of my feelings are real?
Which of the me's is me? She quotes Virginia Woolf, who
got it. How far do our feelings take
their color from the dive underground?
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What's real when your own mind plays tricks on you?
Such a profound question about identity, and this roller
coaster was intense during her college years, A terrible
struggle, A recurring nightmare of violent and dreadful moods.
But also, she says, periods of great fun, passion, high
enthusiasms. The extremes were just extreme
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back and. Forth in that seductive side of
the highs was powerful. Her brain filled with the
cataract of ideas, this flood ofthoughts, and the energy to feel
like she could do it all. Her usual conservatism vanished.
Hem lines up, necklines down, embracing the sensuality of my
youth. Everything dialed up.
Buying 9 Beethoven symphonies instead of 1.
Signing up for seven classes instead of 510, Concert tickets
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instead of two. Just excess.
There's that great example from freshman year.
Walking in the UCLA Botanical Gardens.
Cesar Brook reminds her of Tennyson's Idols of the King.
And bang, this immediate and inflaming sense of urgency runs
to the bookstore. And doesn't just get Tennyson
leaves loaded down with 20 otherbooks, Mallory, TH White, but
also The Golden Bell, Celtic Myths, Young Robert.
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Graves, Tristan. A nice Old Creation myths.
Scottish fairy Tales. Everything because she felt they
held some essential key to the grandiosely tizzed view of the
universe her mind was cooking up.
Arthurian legend explain everything about human nature,
apparently. Seemed absolutely essential at
the time, but the reality she was working 20-30 hours a week
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just to afford college. These buying sprees were
financially disastrous. And then the overdraft notices
the pink slips from the bank. They always arrived.
Right when she crashed into depression, the perfect cruel
timing. That crash meant losing
interest. Deep dread couldn't concentrate.
Suicidal thoughts. Plus that awful agitation.
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Mind racing, but with horrific images, dead bodies, charred
animals, corpses and morgues. She'd pace like a polar bear at
the zoo, trying to burn off the terrible energy.
Just sheer torment and feeling completely alone in it.
She tried once, didn't she, to get help.
It's student health after a lecture on depression.
Yeah, but only got as far as thestairwell outside the clinic.
Sat there sobbing for an hour, paralyzed with fear and shame.
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Couldn't go in, couldn't leave. Eventually just went home.
Heartbreaking. It shows how stigma, even
internal stigma and shame is such a huge barrier kept her
trapped. And that internal chaos
inevitably spilled out. The finances got really bad.
Her brother, the one with the Harvard Economics PhD.
Right. Even he was shocked by the mess
he found on her floor. Piles of receipts, overdraft
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notices, collection letters. Her place looked like it was
ransacked by a colony of moles. And the weird purchases like the
snake bite kits. All the snake bite kits from the
pharmacist who just filled her first lithium prescription and
gave her this knowing smile. Because in her manic state, she
believed God had chosen her personally to warn the world
about. A wild proliferation of killer
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snakes in the promised land. So she was buying up the drug
stores entire stock. It's funny in a dark way, but it
shows the complete disconnect from reality, the grandiose
delusions taking. Over totally and her apartment
reflected it. Chaos everywhere.
Pics, clothes, unopened packages, shopping bags and
hundreds of scraps of paper withnotes.
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Including a poem she found laterweeks later in the refrigerator,
apparently inspired by her spicerack.
Titled God as a Herbivore. Laughs.
You can't make this stuff up. It's that bizarre mix of
creativity and utter confusion. And her senses were just
overloaded. Music could be incredibly
beautiful, hearing individual notes with piercing clarity,
like being in the orchestra pit.But then it became too much
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unbearable. So she'd switch from classical
to blasting The Rolling Stones, trying to match the mood, but it
just led to more confusion. Senses on OverDrive.
And then came the hallucination,the really scary one, watching a
sunset over the Pacific. And suddenly seeing this huge
black centrifuge inside my head.And a figure, tall and an
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evening gown, approaches it witha huge glass tube of blood.
And it's her, covered in blood dress, Cape, gloves.
She watches herself. Put the tube in the centrifuge,
close the lid, push the button. It starts whirling.
Chilling. It's like her mind creating its
own horror movies starring herself.
What do you think that centrifuge symbolized for her?
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It feels like the perfect image for her mind spinning wildly out
of control, doesn't it? And maybe that bloodied figure,
the self-destructive aspect of the illness, it's psychosis,
made visible your own mind turning against you in the most
terrifying way. So she's in this absolute
nightmare psychosis setting in, but luckily, before things got
completely out of hand publicly,someone stepped in a colleague
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she was dating at the time. Yeah, someone who knew her well
and was willing, as she puts it,to take on my manic wrath and
delusions. A huge act of courage and
kindness. He confronted her gently but
firmly about manic depressive illness, about needing lithium,
which couldn't have been easy given she was wildly agitated,
paranoid and physically violent.He handled it incredibly well,
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she says. And you have to remember the
context. Lithium had only been approved
by four years earlier, 1970. It wasn't common, especially in
California. So this colleague had to really
go the extra mile, dug up medical papers, prescribed
emergency lithium and antipsychotics to manage the
immediate crisis. And critically, he actually gave
her the pills morning and evening.
He didn't prescribe them. He made sure she took them and
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talked to her family. Explain the illness to.
Them that's real support and he insisted she take time off work,
which she says saved her job, her clinical privileges.
And there's another friend, too,right?
An ER physician. Yes, he played a huge role,
especially later. He'd call her at crazy hours
pretending he needed company forice cream or something.
Just as a pretext to check on her, pull her out of those
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really dark, morbid states. He had his knack for making her
laugh. She uses that amazing analogy.
Move a sick shark around its tank to keep the water
circulating. Isn't that brilliant?
Just enough gentle prodding to keep her from sinking completely
into the stillness of depression.
What a friend. Truly.
But even with friends like that,actually going to see a
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sychiatrist was still incrediblyhard for her.
Yeah, she describes the sychiatrist she eventually saw.
She met him when he was chief resident at UCLA.
As tall, good looking, strong opinions, steel trap mind, quick
wit, easy laugh. Sounds impressive.
He was apparently this eye lightof rational thought, rigorous
diagnosis and compassion, an award that sometimes felt full
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of fragile egos and vapid speculation.
He really believed in medicine and psychotherapy.
A balanced approach which was forward thinking that, but that
first appointment she was terrified.
Deeply embarrassed, shaking in the waiting room.
Felt like her whole sense of self had just vanished, taking a
disquieting holiday. He just listened, she says.
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Listen forever, then started asking simple, direct questions,
like about her sleep. Slowly, a tiny, very tiny bit of
light started to come in. And then the diagnosis Manic
depressive illness. Her internal reaction?
Pure rage. Unbelievable rage, she silently
wished, locusts on his lands anda pox upon his house while
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smiling politely on the outside.And she says the war had just
begun, which really captures that resistance, that denial,
even when you kind of know deep down that it's true.
Absolutely. And the biggest battle in that
war? It was with the treatment
itself, with lithium. That chapter title Missing
Saturn says it all. She missed the highs, the
glorious illusion of mania and seeing Saturn's rings singing,
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flaming to the moon. Even as a clinician who
understood the science, letting go of that intensity, that
perceived brilliance, was incredibly difficult.
Plus the side effects were brutal for her, Not just nausea,
vomiting. No, much worse was how it
affected her mind, her ability to read, to comprehend, to
remember. Reading was her life.
She used to read 3-4 books a week on lithium.
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She couldn't read a serious bookcover to cover for over 10
years. Devastating.
Absolutely devastating for someone so intellectual.
Can you imagine the frustration she describes?
Literally throwing books againstthe wall in fury, sending
medical journals flying across her office?
Just. Raw anger at feeling dulled,
betrayed by the medicine that was supposed to help.
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Exactly. The only thing she could manage
were poetry and children's bookswith bigger print, shorter
lengths. She kept going back to the wind
in the willows. The part about Malay missing his
home. Yes, reading that soon after
starting lithium just broke her.She wept and wept.
Because she missed her home, hermind, her life of books, her
world where things made sense before madness and medication
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had forced a broken world on her.
It's such a powerful way to describe the loss that came with
treatment. And making it worse.
Her sister was actively against the medication, told her to
whether it through, accused her of capitulating to organize
medicine, said it was drying up her personality, putting out her
fire. Ouch, that must have hurt
terribly, hitting right at her deepest fears about losing
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herself. It's tragic how well meaning
advice from loved ones can sometimes be so damaging when it
comes to mental health. It really is.
So despite knowing better as a clinician, Jamieson kept
fighting it. Her own stubbornness, denial,
thinking she was the exception, trying to lower the dose, stop
taking it. But her psychiatrist held firm,
refused to get caught up in her arguments, her convoluted and
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impassioned web of reasoning. He just kept bringing it back to
the court choice, madness and sanity in between life and
death. Reminding her that side effects
are common and lithium was way better than the alternatives
historically. Chains.
Bloodletting ice picks. Yeah, puts things in
perspective. OK, so psychiatrist, ER friend,
who else was in the corner? Her mother, right?
Oh, absolutely crucial. Tireless support during the
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depressions, cooking, laundry, paying bills, putting up with
the irritability driving her to appointments.
Just unwavering love and patience.
Her mother's formidable strengthand strong sense of values were
like powerful, sustaining countervailing winds, and
Jamison uses that beautiful horse analogy.
Right. It was like her father gave her
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this impossibly wild, dark and unbroken horse through
temperament. A horse with no name.
And her mother taught her how togentle it, gave her the
discipline and love to break it.Understood that the beast was
best handled by turning it toward the sun.
Such a perfect metaphor for integrating that intensity,
finding balance, channeling it constructively.
Different parental gifts, both vital.
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And then there was love. David, the English psychiatrist,
Royal Army Medical Corps, met him at a typically useless staff
meeting at UCLA. Sounds like Keykeeper.
Soft spoken, quiet and thoughtful.
Shared love, music, poetry, military backgrounds.
And he showed this incredible kindness to one of her
schizophrenic patients. Yeah.
Gently coaxing the patient out of her paranoia, showing deep
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empathy and skill. Jameson was immediately drawn to
him. But then came the moment of
truth, telling him about her illness.
Agonizing. She describes his initial
silence as he processed it all. The conservative family wanting
kids, the genetics, the unpredictability, the potential
lethality. That silence must have felt
endless. She was bracing for rejection,
wishing she'd never said anything.
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But then, after what felt like an eternity, he turned, took her
face in his hands, kissed her and said.
I thought it was impossible for me to love you any more than I
do. Right.
Profound acceptance, understanding her, loving her
illness and all strengths and vulnerabilities.
That's real love. It really is, and that kind of
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support, especially David's, gave her the courage to talk to
her doctors about maybe, just maybe, lowering the lithium dose
a bit to get back some of what she'd lost, especially her
reading. And the change was dramatic,
like bandages off my eyes after years of partial blindness
walking in Hyde Park, her steps felt bouncier.
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Sounds were sharper, sights clearer.
The world wasn't filtered through thick layers of gauze
anymore. And crucially, she could once
again read without effort, a huge reclaiming of herself.
That night, listening to music, waiting for David, she felt more
beauty, but also more real sadness.
When he arrived, she put on Schubert.
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And just wept. Wept for the poignancy of all
the intensity I had lost withoutknowing it, and just the sheer
pleasure of feeling it again. It cemented this idea of the
precarious balance between sanity and a subtle, dreadful
muffling of the senses. Living fully means feeling at
all. Maybe the joy and the sorrow.
Seems like it and she uses that great analogy.
The lower dose was like earthquake building codes.
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It allowed her mind and emotionsto sway a bit, giving her more
resilience. Like a flexible building
surviving A quake better than a rigid 1A conscious trade off,
accepting a bit more vulnerability for a much richer,
more vibrant life. So with this New Balance, her
mind clearer, life more vibrant,she really starts carving out
her professional path. Though early on at UCLA, her
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interests were well. All over the place.
Researching higher axes, elephants, violence, LSD
studies, opiate studies, thinking about Beaver Dam
economics with her brother. Phantom breast syndrome,
Marijuana for chemo patients. Animal behavior at the zoo.
It's kind of exhausting. A brilliant mind, clearly, but
maybe still a bit manic in its breath, she admits.
(27:41):
It was too much and too diffuse.But eventually, her own
experience focused her. She narrowed it down to the
study and treatment of mood disorders, driven by this deep
need to make a difference. Personal struggle.
Clarifying professional purpose.And she did make a difference,
helped start the UCLA Affective Disorders Clinic, became its
director. Even as a non physician, which
(28:02):
was unusual. Then she had support.
It became a major teaching and Research Center.
But her work life still followedthe illnesses tides.
When well, she was incredibly productive, writing, thinking,
teaching, full of energy. But when ill do not disturb sign
up staring out the window, sleeping, thinking about suicide
or watching her Guinea pig. The Guinea pig, A memento from a
(28:23):
manic shopping spree, right? Even in the dark times, these
little reminders of the chaos. Exactly.
And when manic, she'd write a paper in a day.
Ideas would flow, design new studies, clear huge piles of
paperwork. The gring was usually set off by
the Grand. The Grand, in turn, would yet
again be cancelled out by the Grim.
What an intense way to work, riding that wave constantly.
(28:46):
Exhilarating sometimes, maybe, but utterly exalting.
Definitely, which leads into herthoughts on language and stigma.
She got this horrible letter once, didn't she?
For using the word madness in a lecture title.
Yeah, this woman accused her of being insensitive, of climbing
my way up the academic ranks by walking over the bodies of the
mentally ill. Brutal must have really stung,
(29:06):
but it made her think deeply about the words we use.
It's a tricky balance, isn't it?Avoiding hurtful terms like nut
or wacko is crucial for empathy and respect, but Jamison also
questions if just changing wordschanges attitudes.
She thinks rejecting words like madness, which have centuries of
history, ignores the power of wit and irony as ways to cope
(29:28):
and understand. It's a really nuanced point.
She sees the need for precise scientific language, like her
own official diagnosis. Bipolar eye disorder recurrent,
severe with psychotic features. Which even includes,
fascinatingly, excessive involvement in pleasurable
activities as a criterion for mania.
Even good things become pathological.
(29:48):
Right clinical precision is vital, but she argues that
evocative words like madness cansometimes capture the lived
experience better than dry clinical terms.
It's about finding the right language for the right context.
Science versus lived experience.And Speaking of science, she had
that encounter with James Watson, the DNA guy.
Oh. Yeah, at a conference on the
genetics of manic depressive illness, she describes him as
(30:10):
constantly twitching, peering, scanning, squinting and yawning,
full of this palpably high energy, unpredictable, a true
zebra among horses. And she kind of saw a
connection, didn't she? His temperament, intense,
competitive, imaginative, iconoclastic, might have been
part of what drove his scientific breakthroughs, a nod
to the idea that brilliance and unique brain wiring can overlap.
(30:34):
Seems like it. Then, at that same conference,
she sees her family tree laid out, a * field of affected
relatives on her father's side, her mother's side.
Squeaky clean. Mogen Xiao, the lithium pioneer,
was there too, sketching his ownfamily tree with all the black
circles and squares representingaffected family members, a stark
visual of genetic legacy. Xiao barely laughed and conceded
(30:57):
the battle of the black boxes when he saw her tree, but
Jameson notes how her own suicide attempt was reduced to
just an asterisk on a black circle.
That simplification sparked a really important conversation
with Shao about using her experience in her work.
But that genetic knowledge wasn't just scientific data.
It brought up heavy emotions, shame, guilt, and then that
horrific encounter with the doctor in LA.
(31:18):
Unbelievably bad. He learned she was on lithium
and wanted kids and asked if sheliked genetic Russian roulette,
then suggested a hysterectomy. Just appalling, utterly
dehumanizing and that conversation, tragic, LED her to
decide not to have children. Which is heartbreaking, but she
emphasizes the immense joy she finds in her nephews and niece.
(31:38):
The fiery, sensitive, original niece.
The quiet, witty, free thinking nephews.
She talks about the awful gap there would be without them.
It's a powerful reminder that family and connection come in
many forms, and her illness didn't prevent that.
No, absolutely not. And the science became even more
visceral when she saw MRI scans showing brain abnormalities in
(31:59):
bipolar patients. These unidentified bright
objects or UB OS. Seeing the physical evidence in
the brain, she called it ungluing proof.
It wasn't just psychological, but biological, physical.
But strangely, after digging into the research, she felt more
reassured than scared. The pace of scientific progress
gave her hope, as she rightly put it.
Whatever else, it certainly gavenew meaning to the concept of
(32:20):
losing ones mind. Laughs.
Yeah. Which brings us to disclosure.
The fear of professional fallout.
The mouse heart factor. Right, that constant worry about
crossing the slipperish gap between being seen as intense or
zany, which might be acceptable in academia, versus being
labeled unstable or inappropriate.
She actually preferred being seen as intermittently psychotic
(32:44):
over seeming weak or neurotic. That says so much about the
stigma and her internal struggle.
And Mouse Heart himself, this awful former colleague
patronizing smug thought women in academic medicine were
flawed, lacked brains and wit, just the embodiment of the
prejudice she faced. Sounds dreadful, but despite
people like him, she made the incredibly brave choice to
(33:06):
disclose her illness to colleagues to her chairman.
Put safeguards in place for patients.
Global transparency, even allowing colleagues to talk to a
psychiatrist. It was vital not just for her
but for the profession. Because, as she points out, the
real danger is clinicians who are ill but don't seek help
because of stigma or fear. They endanger themselves and
their patients. It's a powerful call for
honesty. Absolutely, and honesty includes
(33:29):
acknowledging the sheer violenceof her own manias.
Physically assaultive, screaminginsanely, running frenetically,
trying to leap from cars. It's.
Brutal and the shame trying to reconcile the enthusiastic, high
hopes girl she was with the dreary, crabbed, pained woman
wishing for death, or her quiet spoken, highly disciplined self
with the enraged, utterly insaneand abusive woman.
(33:51):
The split was absolute and disturbing beyond description.
That fragmentation of self. And she makes a really sharp
point about gender bias, too, how anger or irritability in men
with the illness might be tolerated, seen as part of being
driven or visionary. While women showing the same
traits get misdiagnosed, treatedpoorly, seen as just difficult
or emotional. A huge disparity.
(34:12):
Which leads to the central paradox she articulates so
beautifully. Manic depression is a disease
that both kills and gives life. Fire by its nature both creates
and destroys. And the Dylan Thomas quote, the
force, that of trees is my Destroyer, captures that duality
perfectly. Terrifying and creative.
(34:34):
Exactly. And then that final, almost
cheeky observation. Having fire in one's blood is
not without its benefits in the world of academic medicine,
especially for getting tenure. A little dark humor
acknowledging how that relentless Dr., even rooted in
illness, could be channelled. So after all that, the
incredible highs, the devastating lows, the constant
(34:54):
battle, where does she land? What's the take away?
She's adamant, isn't she, that she needs both lithium and
psychotherapy. Absolutely clear on that, She
says she can't imagine a normal life without both.
Lithium does the heavy lifting biologically, prevents the
highs, lessens the depressions, clears the thinking, slows her
down, keeps her alive and functional.
(35:15):
It makes psychotherapy possible.But.
Lithium alone isn't enough. Psychotherapy, she says, heals.
It helps make sense of the confusion, manage the terrifying
thoughts, brings back control and hope.
Pills just bring you back headlong too fast sometimes.
Therapy eases 1 back into reality.
It's a sanctuary, a battleground, a place to learn
and believe you can cope. She states it plainly.
(35:36):
I need both. Medication for the brain,
Therapy for the mind and soul. It's such a critical point about
integrated treatment. And then she asks herself that
huge, startling question. Knowing everything, would she
choose to have this illness? If lithium didn't exist, a
definite no, and it would be an answer laced with terror.
She is unflinching about how awful depression is.
(35:59):
Flat, hollow and unadorable. Makes you irritable and paranoid
and humorless and lifeless. No romanticism there at all.
None, but with lithium her answer is.
Different. It's a complex yes, a really
considered profound yes. She believes that because of the
illness, she has felt more things more deeply, had more
experiences more intensely, loved more and been more loved,
(36:22):
laughed more often for having cried more often, appreciated
more the springs for all the winters.
Wow, it's like the suffering itself carved out a greater
capacity for joy, for life, she says.
She's warned death as close as dungarees, appreciated it and
life more. It's like a form of post
traumatic growth almost seeing the best and worst in people,
learning about loyalty, caring, seeing the vastness of her own
(36:43):
mind and heart, but also their fragility.
Even psychosis, she says, showedher new corners of herself.
Some beautiful, breathtaking corners, others grotesque, but
always new perspectives. And now, feeling her normal self
thanks to medicine and love, shecan't imagine being jaded to
life because she knows about those limitless corners with
(37:03):
their limitless views. It's an incredible statement
that enduring the extremes, surviving the brink, gave her a
depth of perspective and appreciation for life that maybe
wouldn't have been possible otherwise.
It challenges our whole notion of what a normal or even a good
life is. It really does.
It's a powerful testament to resilience, to science, and
definitely to love and connection.
(37:25):
And she leaves us with that final thought.
We all move uneasily within our restraints, which prompts that
question for all of us, doesn't it?
Yeah. So thinking about Jameson's
journey, maybe consider this. What are the restraints, the
limitations, the challenges in your own life?
Could acknowledging them, understanding them, actually
lead to some unexpected kind of freedom, a deeper appreciation
(37:46):
for your own corners, maybe evenyour own sometimes unquiet mind?
What might those silver balls mean for you?
Definitely food for thought, andthat wraps up our deep dive for
today.
Welcome to The Deep Dive. We're the show that really gets
into the weeds of fascinating books and ideas, trying to pull
out the most important, maybe surprising, and yeah, sometimes
even funny bits of knowledge foryou.
And today we're plunging into a really, truly extraordinary
book. It's a memoir that honestly
shifted how a lot of people think about mental illness.
(00:22):
We're talking about An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jameson.
Right. It's this journey deep inside
the experience of manic depressive illness, what most
people now call bipolar disorder.
But the thing that makes this book such a landmark, it isn't
just the honesty, which is incredibly raw, it's who is
telling the story. Exactly.
Jemison isn't just describing the illness from the outside,
(00:44):
like as an observer. She's a highly respected
professor of psychiatry at JohnsHopkins University, a leading
expert. And she's a patient herself.
She lives with the very condition she studies.
Yeah, it's almost, it's like having this brilliant surgeon
performing some kind of groundbreaking operation, right?
But at the same time, she's giving you a live first person
commentary of what it actually feels like to be the one on the
(01:06):
table. That's it exactly.
That's the level of unique sort of dual insight we get here.
So our mission for you today is to offer a real shortcut into
understanding this incredibly complex world using her, well,
unparalleled perspective. We'll.
Explore her amazing journey, theinsights she gained not just
about her own mind, but really about the human condition
(01:27):
itself. And how these super personal
experiences shine a light on universal stuff, resilience,
self acceptance, the power of connection.
And yeah, we'll sprinkle in someunexpected facts and maybe, you
know, a touch of humor where it fits.
Because even deep dives need a little levity.
Definitely. And Jameson herself, she just
nails the feeling of mania, thatdisorienting but strangely
(01:48):
compelling thing with this quote, it pulls you right in.
Let's hear it. When you're high, it's
tremendous. The ideas and feelings are fast
and frequent, like shooting stars, and you follow them until
you find better and brighter ones.
But somewhere this changes. The fast ideas are far too fast,
and there are far too many. Overwhelming confusion replaces
(02:09):
clarity. Memory goes humor and absorption
on friends faces are replaced byfear and concern.
Wow, Just hearing that quote, you get this visceral sense of
the the sheer roller coaster of it all and that voice, that
complete authenticity. That's why this book hit so
hard, wasn't it? Why it resonated with so many
people. Critics, readers, clinicians,
everyone. Absolutely.
(02:30):
So let's start where she starts,in what she calls the Wild Blue
Yonder, which is a great title for military childhood, right?
Perfect and this book, An Unquiet Mind wasn't just
published. It kind of exploded onto the
scene. Critics, other writers were
talking heavyweights like Pat Conroy Will.
They were just completely. They really were.
The reviews called it things like riveting, stunning,
(02:51):
piercingly honest, brave, insightful.
It was almost immediately seen as a classic.
Yeah, Will self, I think it was in the Observer, he said.
It cuts through the dead jargon and detached observations of
psychiatric theory and practice to create a fiery, passionate,
authentic account. Of the devastation and
exaltation, the blindness and illumination of the psychotic
(03:12):
experience. That phrase, fiery, passionate,
authentic. That's key.
She wasn't clinical. She wasn't detached.
No, she lived it. She embodied it.
It wasn't just a description. It felt like a testament,
something that genuinely changedthe conversation around mental
illness. Completely.
And, you know, part of what makes her story feel so human,
so relatable, despite the extreme experiences, is her
(03:34):
background, her foundation. Right, that military childhood,
constant change was just the norm.
She moved so much. Think about it.
Florida, Puerto Rico, California, Tokyo.
Washington twice. Washington twice by the time she
was in fifth grade. That's just incredible.
New schools, new houses, constantly making and losing
friends. That must have been tough.
You'd think so, but despite all that upheaval, her parents,
(03:56):
especially her mother, really worked hard to keep things as
secure, warm and constant as possible.
She calls it an amulet. Yeah, like this protective
charm, right? A source of warmth, friendship,
confidence that acted as a buffer against future
unhappiness. It's a really powerful image.
It makes you wonder how important that baseline
stability was for her later on, when her own mind became so
(04:19):
unstable, like a reserve she could draw on.
It seems critical. And the family dynamics within
this moving bubble were pretty interesting, too.
Her older brother, three years older.
He was the steadiest. Her rock, basically.
She calls him her staunch ally. Smart, fair, self confident.
He provided extra protection like a built in best friend and
(04:40):
bodyguard. Sounds like it a real anchor in
that constantly shifting world. But then the relationship with
her sister, who's only 13 monthsolder, that was much more
complex. Yeah, described as the truly
beautiful one, but also having afierce temper, these very black
and passing moods. And she really disliked the
conservative military lifestyle.And a bit of a rebel, then.
Definitely hated high school, skipped class to hang out at the
(05:03):
Smithsonian or the Army Medical Museum, or just smoke and drink
with friends. And she apparently really
resented Jameson, seeing her as the fair haired one who found
things like school and friends easy.
Classic sibling stuff, maybe, but with a darker edge.
Her sisters seem to find the world harsh and difficult.
It's fascinating how two kids inthe same environment can have
(05:24):
such different takes. Jameson herself wonders if maybe
her own serious mood issues surfacing later meant she got a
longer, more, you know, wonderful childhood that her
sister missed out on. Giving her that solid base, that
amulet you mentioned which maybeher sister didn't quite get in
the same way, it really underscores how early emotional
foundations can build resilience.
It really does. And contrasting with the
(05:47):
sister's struggles, you have thefather.
He sounds like, well, quite something.
Oh yeah, magically involved abelian.
Funny. Curious about almost every.
Just full of infectious enthusiasm, she says.
Snowflakes and clouds weren't just weather in his world, They
became events and characters. And when his moods were at high
tide, which looking back feels significant, the house would
(06:09):
fill with music and beautiful jewelry might appear like a
moonstone ring or Ruby bracelets.
Signs that some grand pronouncement was coming.
Exactly. Sometimes it was this passionate
certainty that windmills were the only way to save the world,
or insisting the kids had to learn Russian because Russian
poetry was just so inexpressiblybeautiful in the original.
(06:32):
Imagine your dad suddenly deciding Pushkin is essential
homework. That's intense, it's charming,
but you can also sort of see maybe a hint of that manic
style, single minded focus. Perhaps, and the best story, I
think, is the George Bernard Shaw one.
Oh yeah, tell that one. He reads that Shaw left money in
his will for a phonetic alphabetand specified Andracles and the
(06:53):
Lion should be the first play translated right.
So her dad goes out and buys nearly 100 copies of Andracles
and the Lion and just starts handing them out to everyone.
He it's everyone in his flight path.
Just had to share the joy apparently. 100 copies.
That's that's dedication or something else?
It's wonderfully eccentric, but again, that expansive energy
feels familiar in the context ofthe book.
(07:15):
Totally and balancing this out you had her mother, the
persevering steadiness, the. Anchor Jameson credits her
survival through the years of pain and nightmare directly to
her mother's belief in seeing things through, her ability to
love and learn, listen and change.
She uses that lovely image of her mother being like a gentle
mother cat picking up a stray kitten by the scruff of its
(07:37):
neck. Gently but firmly bringing her
back to safety, security, food protection.
That steady, unconditional love must have been a lifeline,
especially contrasting with the father's more unpredictable
tides. Absolutely.
And both parents were great about encouraging her interests.
Poetry, science, medicine. They seemed good at knowing when
something was just a phase versus a real passion.
(07:58):
Which brings us to the sloth. The Sloth Saga This is
brilliant. Young Kay, prone to strong and
absolute passions, decides they desperately need a pet sloth.
And her mother, already running a small zoo with dogs, cats,
birds, fish, turtles, lizards, frogs, mice, was, shall we say,
(08:18):
less than wildly enthusiastic. Understandably.
So the father comes up with thisgenius plan.
He tells her OK, make a detailedscientific and literary notebook
about sloths. Everything like diet, habitat.
Everything practical stuff, diet, living space, vet care,
but also poems about sloths, essays on what they meant to
her. Design A habitat for the house
(08:40):
and go observe them at the zoo and take detailed notes.
If she did all that, then they'dconsider it.
Parental genius right there. They knew she was just in love
with the idea of a strange idea.Exactly.
And guess what happened when sheactually went to the National
Zoo to observe them? Let me guess, not quite as
exciting in reality. She found it utterly boring.
Declared there was anything moreboring than watching a sloth.
Other than watching cricket, perhaps.
(09:02):
Or the House Appropriations Committee meetings on C-SPAN.
Huh. That's fantastic, But, you know,
thinking about it, does that kind of foreshadow the intense
but fleeting passions of mania? An early lesson in telling real
interest from, like, sheer fascination.
That's a great point. It's like a mini version of
those grand ideas that seem essential in the moment but then
(09:23):
just evaporate. It shows that tendency was maybe
always there, just not pathologically so yet.
Right, but her interest in medicine, unlike sloths, did
stick. Age 12, she gets dissecting
tools, a microscope, Grey's Anatomy.
The classic textbook and the basement ping pong table that
became her lab. Dissecting frogs, fish, worms,
(09:44):
turtles. Yep.
Apparently she only stopped whenshe moved up the evolutionary
ladder to a fetal pig. It's tiny snout and perfect
little whiskers finally did me in.
OK, so she had her limits, but still, that early fascination
with biology, with the body, it feels almost prophetic given
where her life went. Totally.
But this interest in the mind and its problems took a really
dark turn when she was 15. The trip to Saint Elizabeth's.
(10:07):
Yeah, the federal psychiatric hospital in DC, She went with
her fellow candy stripers. And the bus ride over was.
Filled with nervous jokes, terribly insensitive
schoolgirlish remarks to cover their fear, The old taunt you'll
end up in Saint Elizabeth's, which is just a dark joke,
suddenly felt heavier. Even though she felt sane, she
(10:28):
mentions these irrational fears started creeping in.
She remembered her own terrible temper, which scared her.
She called it the only crack in the otherwise vacuum sealed
casing of my behavior. A tiny crack she didn't
understand yet. Then they get there and the
grounds are beautiful, right? Old trees, big lawns, views of
the city. Deceptively serene, because
inside the Wards it was a different story.
(10:50):
The dreadful reality of the sights and sounds and smells of
insanity. Just an overwhelming sensory
assault. And the head nurse tells her
there are 90 patients for each attendant 90.
Unbelievable. And when Jamison asks how they
manage and how staff protect themselves, the nurse says,
well, they have drugs, but sometimes it became necessary to
hose them down. Hose them down.
(11:11):
It's just so brutal, dehumanizing.
What did that teach a 15 year old about how society viewed
madness then? That it was something to be
controlled by force, not understood, not treated with
compassion, just contained a chilling lesson, especially
given her own future. And the dayroom scene she
describes, bizarre clothes, pacing, strange laughter,
(11:32):
screams, one woman standing likea stork, giggling.
Another who she thought must have been beautiful once just
braiding and unbraiding her hair, eyes darting everywhere.
It sounds terrifying, but Jameson says she was also
intrigued, somehow captivated. While the other girl stayed
back. She actually walked towards the
woman with the hair. Took some courage.
(11:52):
She asked her why she was there.And the woman stared, then
explained to her parents had puta pinball machine inside her
head when she was 5. Red balls meant laugh.
Blue meant silence. Green meant multiply by three.
Wow. But there was another ball.
Yes, a mysterious silver ball that came through every few
days. So Jameson, ever the curious
one, asks, what does the silver ball mean?
(12:12):
Nothing. The woman just looked at her
intently. Then her eyes went dead, stared
off into space, caught up in some internal world, Jameson
says. I never found out what the
silver ball meant. That unanswered question, it's
so haunting. It's more than just a glimpse of
madness. It's her first real taste of the
isolation, the private logic of psychosis, something she'd later
(12:35):
understand from the inside. Yeah, that visit, those images,
they must have echoed terribly later on because her own illness
didn't just appear overnight. She talks about the onset being
gradual. Right from quick thought to
chaos. A slow and beautifully seductive
process. That's such a crucial point she
makes. It wasn't a sudden break.
It crept up on her. When she first joined the
(12:55):
psychiatry faculty at UCLA, things seemed OK Lots of energy,
working hard, not sleeping much.Which, as she points out, is
tricky. Isn't it?
Lack of sleep is a symptom, but it also triggers mania, a
dangerous cycle. Exactly.
And then came what she calls theflights of the mind, that
initial phase of mania. Where she says it's tremendous
ideas like shooting stars. You feel charming, articulate,
(13:17):
powerful. Yeah, ease, intensity, power,
well-being, financial omnipotence and euphoria.
It honestly sounds kind of amazing.
Almost like a superpower. Which explains why it's so hard
to let go of, right? Even knowing the crash is
coming, you can see the appeal, the seduction.
Totally. But then she says somewhere this
changes. The ideas get far too fast, far
(13:39):
too many. Confusion replaces clarity.
Memory fails. And people's reactions change.
Friends look scared, not engaged.
Everything feels wrong. You become irritable, angry,
frightened, uncontrollable, trapped in the blackest caves of
the mind. It's like hitting the
accelerator and having it stick.You're just hurtling towards
disaster. And the fallout?
Devastating. Revoked credit cards, Bounced
(14:01):
checks, Having to explain thingsat work.
Apologies. A ruined marriage mania might
erase some memory, she says, butit leaves these bitter
reminders. And those deep, haunting
questions, Which of my feelings are real?
Which of the me's is me? She quotes Virginia Woolf, who
got it. How far do our feelings take
their color from the dive underground?
(14:22):
What's real when your own mind plays tricks on you?
Such a profound question about identity, and this roller
coaster was intense during her college years, A terrible
struggle, A recurring nightmare of violent and dreadful moods.
But also, she says, periods of great fun, passion, high
enthusiasms. The extremes were just extreme
(14:42):
back and. Forth in that seductive side of
the highs was powerful. Her brain filled with the
cataract of ideas, this flood ofthoughts, and the energy to feel
like she could do it all. Her usual conservatism vanished.
Hem lines up, necklines down, embracing the sensuality of my
youth. Everything dialed up.
Buying 9 Beethoven symphonies instead of 1.
Signing up for seven classes instead of 510, Concert tickets
(15:05):
instead of two. Just excess.
There's that great example from freshman year.
Walking in the UCLA Botanical Gardens.
Cesar Brook reminds her of Tennyson's Idols of the King.
And bang, this immediate and inflaming sense of urgency runs
to the bookstore. And doesn't just get Tennyson
leaves loaded down with 20 otherbooks, Mallory, TH White, but
also The Golden Bell, Celtic Myths, Young Robert.
(15:27):
Graves, Tristan. A nice Old Creation myths.
Scottish fairy Tales. Everything because she felt they
held some essential key to the grandiosely tizzed view of the
universe her mind was cooking up.
Arthurian legend explain everything about human nature,
apparently. Seemed absolutely essential at
the time, but the reality she was working 20-30 hours a week
(15:47):
just to afford college. These buying sprees were
financially disastrous. And then the overdraft notices
the pink slips from the bank. They always arrived.
Right when she crashed into depression, the perfect cruel
timing. That crash meant losing
interest. Deep dread couldn't concentrate.
Suicidal thoughts. Plus that awful agitation.
(16:09):
Mind racing, but with horrific images, dead bodies, charred
animals, corpses and morgues. She'd pace like a polar bear at
the zoo, trying to burn off the terrible energy.
Just sheer torment and feeling completely alone in it.
She tried once, didn't she, to get help.
It's student health after a lecture on depression.
Yeah, but only got as far as thestairwell outside the clinic.
Sat there sobbing for an hour, paralyzed with fear and shame.
(16:30):
Couldn't go in, couldn't leave. Eventually just went home.
Heartbreaking. It shows how stigma, even
internal stigma and shame is such a huge barrier kept her
trapped. And that internal chaos
inevitably spilled out. The finances got really bad.
Her brother, the one with the Harvard Economics PhD.
Right. Even he was shocked by the mess
he found on her floor. Piles of receipts, overdraft
(16:53):
notices, collection letters. Her place looked like it was
ransacked by a colony of moles. And the weird purchases like the
snake bite kits. All the snake bite kits from the
pharmacist who just filled her first lithium prescription and
gave her this knowing smile. Because in her manic state, she
believed God had chosen her personally to warn the world
about. A wild proliferation of killer
(17:15):
snakes in the promised land. So she was buying up the drug
stores entire stock. It's funny in a dark way, but it
shows the complete disconnect from reality, the grandiose
delusions taking. Over totally and her apartment
reflected it. Chaos everywhere.
Pics, clothes, unopened packages, shopping bags and
hundreds of scraps of paper withnotes.
(17:36):
Including a poem she found laterweeks later in the refrigerator,
apparently inspired by her spicerack.
Titled God as a Herbivore. Laughs.
You can't make this stuff up. It's that bizarre mix of
creativity and utter confusion. And her senses were just
overloaded. Music could be incredibly
beautiful, hearing individual notes with piercing clarity,
like being in the orchestra pit.But then it became too much
(17:59):
unbearable. So she'd switch from classical
to blasting The Rolling Stones, trying to match the mood, but it
just led to more confusion. Senses on OverDrive.
And then came the hallucination,the really scary one, watching a
sunset over the Pacific. And suddenly seeing this huge
black centrifuge inside my head.And a figure, tall and an
(18:19):
evening gown, approaches it witha huge glass tube of blood.
And it's her, covered in blood dress, Cape, gloves.
She watches herself. Put the tube in the centrifuge,
close the lid, push the button. It starts whirling.
Chilling. It's like her mind creating its
own horror movies starring herself.
What do you think that centrifuge symbolized for her?
(18:40):
It feels like the perfect image for her mind spinning wildly out
of control, doesn't it? And maybe that bloodied figure,
the self-destructive aspect of the illness, it's psychosis,
made visible your own mind turning against you in the most
terrifying way. So she's in this absolute
nightmare psychosis setting in, but luckily, before things got
completely out of hand publicly,someone stepped in a colleague
(19:02):
she was dating at the time. Yeah, someone who knew her well
and was willing, as she puts it,to take on my manic wrath and
delusions. A huge act of courage and
kindness. He confronted her gently but
firmly about manic depressive illness, about needing lithium,
which couldn't have been easy given she was wildly agitated,
paranoid and physically violent.He handled it incredibly well,
(19:26):
she says. And you have to remember the
context. Lithium had only been approved
by four years earlier, 1970. It wasn't common, especially in
California. So this colleague had to really
go the extra mile, dug up medical papers, prescribed
emergency lithium and antipsychotics to manage the
immediate crisis. And critically, he actually gave
her the pills morning and evening.
He didn't prescribe them. He made sure she took them and
(19:48):
talked to her family. Explain the illness to.
Them that's real support and he insisted she take time off work,
which she says saved her job, her clinical privileges.
And there's another friend, too,right?
An ER physician. Yes, he played a huge role,
especially later. He'd call her at crazy hours
pretending he needed company forice cream or something.
Just as a pretext to check on her, pull her out of those
(20:09):
really dark, morbid states. He had his knack for making her
laugh. She uses that amazing analogy.
Move a sick shark around its tank to keep the water
circulating. Isn't that brilliant?
Just enough gentle prodding to keep her from sinking completely
into the stillness of depression.
What a friend. Truly.
But even with friends like that,actually going to see a
(20:30):
sychiatrist was still incrediblyhard for her.
Yeah, she describes the sychiatrist she eventually saw.
She met him when he was chief resident at UCLA.
As tall, good looking, strong opinions, steel trap mind, quick
wit, easy laugh. Sounds impressive.
He was apparently this eye lightof rational thought, rigorous
diagnosis and compassion, an award that sometimes felt full
(20:52):
of fragile egos and vapid speculation.
He really believed in medicine and psychotherapy.
A balanced approach which was forward thinking that, but that
first appointment she was terrified.
Deeply embarrassed, shaking in the waiting room.
Felt like her whole sense of self had just vanished, taking a
disquieting holiday. He just listened, she says.
(21:12):
Listen forever, then started asking simple, direct questions,
like about her sleep. Slowly, a tiny, very tiny bit of
light started to come in. And then the diagnosis Manic
depressive illness. Her internal reaction?
Pure rage. Unbelievable rage, she silently
wished, locusts on his lands anda pox upon his house while
(21:35):
smiling politely on the outside.And she says the war had just
begun, which really captures that resistance, that denial,
even when you kind of know deep down that it's true.
Absolutely. And the biggest battle in that
war? It was with the treatment
itself, with lithium. That chapter title Missing
Saturn says it all. She missed the highs, the
glorious illusion of mania and seeing Saturn's rings singing,
(21:57):
flaming to the moon. Even as a clinician who
understood the science, letting go of that intensity, that
perceived brilliance, was incredibly difficult.
Plus the side effects were brutal for her, Not just nausea,
vomiting. No, much worse was how it
affected her mind, her ability to read, to comprehend, to
remember. Reading was her life.
She used to read 3-4 books a week on lithium.
(22:19):
She couldn't read a serious bookcover to cover for over 10
years. Devastating.
Absolutely devastating for someone so intellectual.
Can you imagine the frustration she describes?
Literally throwing books againstthe wall in fury, sending
medical journals flying across her office?
Just. Raw anger at feeling dulled,
betrayed by the medicine that was supposed to help.
(22:40):
Exactly. The only thing she could manage
were poetry and children's bookswith bigger print, shorter
lengths. She kept going back to the wind
in the willows. The part about Malay missing his
home. Yes, reading that soon after
starting lithium just broke her.She wept and wept.
Because she missed her home, hermind, her life of books, her
world where things made sense before madness and medication
(23:03):
had forced a broken world on her.
It's such a powerful way to describe the loss that came with
treatment. And making it worse.
Her sister was actively against the medication, told her to
whether it through, accused her of capitulating to organize
medicine, said it was drying up her personality, putting out her
fire. Ouch, that must have hurt
terribly, hitting right at her deepest fears about losing
(23:25):
herself. It's tragic how well meaning
advice from loved ones can sometimes be so damaging when it
comes to mental health. It really is.
So despite knowing better as a clinician, Jamieson kept
fighting it. Her own stubbornness, denial,
thinking she was the exception, trying to lower the dose, stop
taking it. But her psychiatrist held firm,
refused to get caught up in her arguments, her convoluted and
(23:48):
impassioned web of reasoning. He just kept bringing it back to
the court choice, madness and sanity in between life and
death. Reminding her that side effects
are common and lithium was way better than the alternatives
historically. Chains.
Bloodletting ice picks. Yeah, puts things in
perspective. OK, so psychiatrist, ER friend,
who else was in the corner? Her mother, right?
Oh, absolutely crucial. Tireless support during the
(24:10):
depressions, cooking, laundry, paying bills, putting up with
the irritability driving her to appointments.
Just unwavering love and patience.
Her mother's formidable strengthand strong sense of values were
like powerful, sustaining countervailing winds, and
Jamison uses that beautiful horse analogy.
Right. It was like her father gave her
(24:30):
this impossibly wild, dark and unbroken horse through
temperament. A horse with no name.
And her mother taught her how togentle it, gave her the
discipline and love to break it.Understood that the beast was
best handled by turning it toward the sun.
Such a perfect metaphor for integrating that intensity,
finding balance, channeling it constructively.
Different parental gifts, both vital.
(24:52):
And then there was love. David, the English psychiatrist,
Royal Army Medical Corps, met him at a typically useless staff
meeting at UCLA. Sounds like Keykeeper.
Soft spoken, quiet and thoughtful.
Shared love, music, poetry, military backgrounds.
And he showed this incredible kindness to one of her
schizophrenic patients. Yeah.
Gently coaxing the patient out of her paranoia, showing deep
(25:14):
empathy and skill. Jameson was immediately drawn to
him. But then came the moment of
truth, telling him about her illness.
Agonizing. She describes his initial
silence as he processed it all. The conservative family wanting
kids, the genetics, the unpredictability, the potential
lethality. That silence must have felt
endless. She was bracing for rejection,
wishing she'd never said anything.
(25:35):
But then, after what felt like an eternity, he turned, took her
face in his hands, kissed her and said.
I thought it was impossible for me to love you any more than I
do. Right.
Profound acceptance, understanding her, loving her
illness and all strengths and vulnerabilities.
That's real love. It really is, and that kind of
(25:55):
support, especially David's, gave her the courage to talk to
her doctors about maybe, just maybe, lowering the lithium dose
a bit to get back some of what she'd lost, especially her
reading. And the change was dramatic,
like bandages off my eyes after years of partial blindness
walking in Hyde Park, her steps felt bouncier.
(26:15):
Sounds were sharper, sights clearer.
The world wasn't filtered through thick layers of gauze
anymore. And crucially, she could once
again read without effort, a huge reclaiming of herself.
That night, listening to music, waiting for David, she felt more
beauty, but also more real sadness.
When he arrived, she put on Schubert.
(26:36):
And just wept. Wept for the poignancy of all
the intensity I had lost withoutknowing it, and just the sheer
pleasure of feeling it again. It cemented this idea of the
precarious balance between sanity and a subtle, dreadful
muffling of the senses. Living fully means feeling at
all. Maybe the joy and the sorrow.
Seems like it and she uses that great analogy.
The lower dose was like earthquake building codes.
(26:58):
It allowed her mind and emotionsto sway a bit, giving her more
resilience. Like a flexible building
surviving A quake better than a rigid 1A conscious trade off,
accepting a bit more vulnerability for a much richer,
more vibrant life. So with this New Balance, her
mind clearer, life more vibrant,she really starts carving out
her professional path. Though early on at UCLA, her
(27:19):
interests were well. All over the place.
Researching higher axes, elephants, violence, LSD
studies, opiate studies, thinking about Beaver Dam
economics with her brother. Phantom breast syndrome,
Marijuana for chemo patients. Animal behavior at the zoo.
It's kind of exhausting. A brilliant mind, clearly, but
maybe still a bit manic in its breath, she admits.
(27:41):
It was too much and too diffuse.But eventually, her own
experience focused her. She narrowed it down to the
study and treatment of mood disorders, driven by this deep
need to make a difference. Personal struggle.
Clarifying professional purpose.And she did make a difference,
helped start the UCLA Affective Disorders Clinic, became its
director. Even as a non physician, which
(28:02):
was unusual. Then she had support.
It became a major teaching and Research Center.
But her work life still followedthe illnesses tides.
When well, she was incredibly productive, writing, thinking,
teaching, full of energy. But when ill do not disturb sign
up staring out the window, sleeping, thinking about suicide
or watching her Guinea pig. The Guinea pig, A memento from a
(28:23):
manic shopping spree, right? Even in the dark times, these
little reminders of the chaos. Exactly.
And when manic, she'd write a paper in a day.
Ideas would flow, design new studies, clear huge piles of
paperwork. The gring was usually set off by
the Grand. The Grand, in turn, would yet
again be cancelled out by the Grim.
What an intense way to work, riding that wave constantly.
(28:46):
Exhilarating sometimes, maybe, but utterly exalting.
Definitely, which leads into herthoughts on language and stigma.
She got this horrible letter once, didn't she?
For using the word madness in a lecture title.
Yeah, this woman accused her of being insensitive, of climbing
my way up the academic ranks by walking over the bodies of the
mentally ill. Brutal must have really stung,
(29:06):
but it made her think deeply about the words we use.
It's a tricky balance, isn't it?Avoiding hurtful terms like nut
or wacko is crucial for empathy and respect, but Jamison also
questions if just changing wordschanges attitudes.
She thinks rejecting words like madness, which have centuries of
history, ignores the power of wit and irony as ways to cope
(29:28):
and understand. It's a really nuanced point.
She sees the need for precise scientific language, like her
own official diagnosis. Bipolar eye disorder recurrent,
severe with psychotic features. Which even includes,
fascinatingly, excessive involvement in pleasurable
activities as a criterion for mania.
Even good things become pathological.
(29:48):
Right clinical precision is vital, but she argues that
evocative words like madness cansometimes capture the lived
experience better than dry clinical terms.
It's about finding the right language for the right context.
Science versus lived experience.And Speaking of science, she had
that encounter with James Watson, the DNA guy.
Oh. Yeah, at a conference on the
genetics of manic depressive illness, she describes him as
(30:10):
constantly twitching, peering, scanning, squinting and yawning,
full of this palpably high energy, unpredictable, a true
zebra among horses. And she kind of saw a
connection, didn't she? His temperament, intense,
competitive, imaginative, iconoclastic, might have been
part of what drove his scientific breakthroughs, a nod
to the idea that brilliance and unique brain wiring can overlap.
(30:34):
Seems like it. Then, at that same conference,
she sees her family tree laid out, a * field of affected
relatives on her father's side, her mother's side.
Squeaky clean. Mogen Xiao, the lithium pioneer,
was there too, sketching his ownfamily tree with all the black
circles and squares representingaffected family members, a stark
visual of genetic legacy. Xiao barely laughed and conceded
(30:57):
the battle of the black boxes when he saw her tree, but
Jameson notes how her own suicide attempt was reduced to
just an asterisk on a black circle.
That simplification sparked a really important conversation
with Shao about using her experience in her work.
But that genetic knowledge wasn't just scientific data.
It brought up heavy emotions, shame, guilt, and then that
horrific encounter with the doctor in LA.
(31:18):
Unbelievably bad. He learned she was on lithium
and wanted kids and asked if sheliked genetic Russian roulette,
then suggested a hysterectomy. Just appalling, utterly
dehumanizing and that conversation, tragic, LED her to
decide not to have children. Which is heartbreaking, but she
emphasizes the immense joy she finds in her nephews and niece.
(31:38):
The fiery, sensitive, original niece.
The quiet, witty, free thinking nephews.
She talks about the awful gap there would be without them.
It's a powerful reminder that family and connection come in
many forms, and her illness didn't prevent that.
No, absolutely not. And the science became even more
visceral when she saw MRI scans showing brain abnormalities in
(31:59):
bipolar patients. These unidentified bright
objects or UB OS. Seeing the physical evidence in
the brain, she called it ungluing proof.
It wasn't just psychological, but biological, physical.
But strangely, after digging into the research, she felt more
reassured than scared. The pace of scientific progress
gave her hope, as she rightly put it.
Whatever else, it certainly gavenew meaning to the concept of
(32:20):
losing ones mind. Laughs.
Yeah. Which brings us to disclosure.
The fear of professional fallout.
The mouse heart factor. Right, that constant worry about
crossing the slipperish gap between being seen as intense or
zany, which might be acceptable in academia, versus being
labeled unstable or inappropriate.
She actually preferred being seen as intermittently psychotic
(32:44):
over seeming weak or neurotic. That says so much about the
stigma and her internal struggle.
And Mouse Heart himself, this awful former colleague
patronizing smug thought women in academic medicine were
flawed, lacked brains and wit, just the embodiment of the
prejudice she faced. Sounds dreadful, but despite
people like him, she made the incredibly brave choice to
(33:06):
disclose her illness to colleagues to her chairman.
Put safeguards in place for patients.
Global transparency, even allowing colleagues to talk to a
psychiatrist. It was vital not just for her
but for the profession. Because, as she points out, the
real danger is clinicians who are ill but don't seek help
because of stigma or fear. They endanger themselves and
their patients. It's a powerful call for
honesty. Absolutely, and honesty includes
(33:29):
acknowledging the sheer violenceof her own manias.
Physically assaultive, screaminginsanely, running frenetically,
trying to leap from cars. It's.
Brutal and the shame trying to reconcile the enthusiastic, high
hopes girl she was with the dreary, crabbed, pained woman
wishing for death, or her quiet spoken, highly disciplined self
with the enraged, utterly insaneand abusive woman.
(33:51):
The split was absolute and disturbing beyond description.
That fragmentation of self. And she makes a really sharp
point about gender bias, too, how anger or irritability in men
with the illness might be tolerated, seen as part of being
driven or visionary. While women showing the same
traits get misdiagnosed, treatedpoorly, seen as just difficult
or emotional. A huge disparity.
(34:12):
Which leads to the central paradox she articulates so
beautifully. Manic depression is a disease
that both kills and gives life. Fire by its nature both creates
and destroys. And the Dylan Thomas quote, the
force, that of trees is my Destroyer, captures that duality
perfectly. Terrifying and creative.
(34:34):
Exactly. And then that final, almost
cheeky observation. Having fire in one's blood is
not without its benefits in the world of academic medicine,
especially for getting tenure. A little dark humor
acknowledging how that relentless Dr., even rooted in
illness, could be channelled. So after all that, the
incredible highs, the devastating lows, the constant
(34:54):
battle, where does she land? What's the take away?
She's adamant, isn't she, that she needs both lithium and
psychotherapy. Absolutely clear on that, She
says she can't imagine a normal life without both.
Lithium does the heavy lifting biologically, prevents the
highs, lessens the depressions, clears the thinking, slows her
down, keeps her alive and functional.
(35:15):
It makes psychotherapy possible.But.
Lithium alone isn't enough. Psychotherapy, she says, heals.
It helps make sense of the confusion, manage the terrifying
thoughts, brings back control and hope.
Pills just bring you back headlong too fast sometimes.
Therapy eases 1 back into reality.
It's a sanctuary, a battleground, a place to learn
and believe you can cope. She states it plainly.
(35:36):
I need both. Medication for the brain,
Therapy for the mind and soul. It's such a critical point about
integrated treatment. And then she asks herself that
huge, startling question. Knowing everything, would she
choose to have this illness? If lithium didn't exist, a
definite no, and it would be an answer laced with terror.
She is unflinching about how awful depression is.
(35:59):
Flat, hollow and unadorable. Makes you irritable and paranoid
and humorless and lifeless. No romanticism there at all.
None, but with lithium her answer is.
Different. It's a complex yes, a really
considered profound yes. She believes that because of the
illness, she has felt more things more deeply, had more
experiences more intensely, loved more and been more loved,
(36:22):
laughed more often for having cried more often, appreciated
more the springs for all the winters.
Wow, it's like the suffering itself carved out a greater
capacity for joy, for life, she says.
She's warned death as close as dungarees, appreciated it and
life more. It's like a form of post
traumatic growth almost seeing the best and worst in people,
learning about loyalty, caring, seeing the vastness of her own
(36:43):
mind and heart, but also their fragility.
Even psychosis, she says, showedher new corners of herself.
Some beautiful, breathtaking corners, others grotesque, but
always new perspectives. And now, feeling her normal self
thanks to medicine and love, shecan't imagine being jaded to
life because she knows about those limitless corners with
(37:03):
their limitless views. It's an incredible statement
that enduring the extremes, surviving the brink, gave her a
depth of perspective and appreciation for life that maybe
wouldn't have been possible otherwise.
It challenges our whole notion of what a normal or even a good
life is. It really does.
It's a powerful testament to resilience, to science, and
definitely to love and connection.
(37:25):
And she leaves us with that final thought.
We all move uneasily within our restraints, which prompts that
question for all of us, doesn't it?
Yeah. So thinking about Jameson's
journey, maybe consider this. What are the restraints, the
limitations, the challenges in your own life?
Could acknowledging them, understanding them, actually
lead to some unexpected kind of freedom, a deeper appreciation
(37:46):
for your own corners, maybe evenyour own sometimes unquiet mind?
What might those silver balls mean for you?
Definitely food for thought, andthat wraps up our deep dive for
today.
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