TOUCHED WITH FIRE
Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament
By Kay Redfield Jamison C 1993
The Free Press
Focusing on English poets and writers of renown, including a genealogy focus on familial mental illness (though perhaps not diagnosed as contemporary psychiatrists might today then), Kay Redfield Jamison links artistic talent and temperament with Manic Depression - now called Bipolar disease. How many of today's artistic and literary geniuses are too medicated to create, that's what I want to know!
Page 117
"Profound melancholy or the suffering of psychosis can fundamentally change an individual's expectations and beliefs about the nature, duration, and meaning of life, the nature of man, and the fragility and resilience of the human spirit. Many writers, artists, and composers have described the impact of their long periods of depression, how they have struggled or dealt with them, and how they have used them in their work. The influence of pain's domination fills novels, canvases, and musical scores; there is no shortage of portrayals. Poet Anne Sexton, for one, described the importance of using pain in her work: "I, myself, alternate between hiding behind my own hands, protecting myself anyway possible, and this other, this seeing touching other. I guess I mean that creative people must not avoid the pain that they get dealt... Hurt must be examined like a plague."
