47 pages • 1 hour read
An Unquiet Mind
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Themes
The Role of Love in Healing
Love plays an important role as a theme in An Unquiet Mind; Jamison begins with glimpses of love, returns to it throughout the text, and devotes much of Part 3 to love as a healing force. Love, in this context, does not necessarily mean long-term romantic love; rather, Jamison illustrates versions of love that include familial love and devotion (more on that below), love and acceptance shown to her by colleagues, and even the kind of romantic companionship that is restorative and helpful, even if fleeting.
Jamison describes her household growing up as one that was warm and generally full of love: although she didn’t get along with her sister, her brother was kind toward her and protective of her, and her parents showed her warmth and acceptance, regardless of the direction she chose to go in—never suggesting that her passions were childish or ludicrous, for example. It’s notable that her mood swings became more erratic at the same time that her home because colder. Even more so, there is a stark contrast between her loving, if mercurial, father as a child and the colder, angrier person he became when she was a teenager; this might partially be explained by illness, but it simultaneously is suggested as a triggering event.
Likewise, love is shown as a kind of grounding force for her through her illness. She repeatedly expresses gratitude toward the friends and colleagues who showed her warmth, kindness, and acceptance, and she demonstrates how crushing and harmful it can be when, like Mouseheart in “Clinical Privileges,” they reject her for her illness, not least of all because doing so means they are rejecting her despite her feeling close enough to them that she can open up. Her journey can also be situated via romantic relationships to some extent, as she frames Part 3 first through David Laurie, then through the unnamed affair in “They Tell Me It Rained,” and finally through her second husband, Richard Wyatt, in “Love Watching Madness.”
She is careful to write that “love is not the cure,” but that it “can act as a very strong medicine” (175), and later recognizes that the book, as written, is as much about love as it is about moods, as it functions as a healing force (215). It is a constant, and though it can be yielded as a weapon, fortunately, for her, it has more often been used as a salve.
What It Means to Be Mentally Ill
Although Jamison writes that this became a book about love, it is nevertheless, of course, very much a book about what it means to be mentally ill. However, it is not merely a book about the experience of mental illness, but rather a book about the way mental illness interacts with daily life and responsibilities. Part 2 deals most heavily with the actual illness and its effect on her: e.g., in “Missing Saturn,” which most poetically captures the addictive experience of mania. Further, Jamison’s narrative style—loosely chronological, but with movement and fluidity—helps to capture the mindset of an individual who is weaving between mania and depression, which, as she argues at the end, should not be viewed as two separate poles of experience.
When taken as a whole, though, the book becomes much more about the relationship between mental illness and daily life. In Parts 1 and 2, and even as early in the prologue, she shows us how mania can quickly move from exciting for the people around her to exhausting, impacting her social life despite her being unaware of its movement. To that same end, it colors all of her relationships: if she doesn’t discuss it, that “consigns a friendship to a certain inevitable level of superficiality” (200), and all of her romantic relationships are colored by a fear of inevitably needing to explain her illness and hope her partner is understanding. Perhaps most importantly, living with manic-depressive illness has put her in a constant state of professional fear, despite her prolific success as a researcher and writer; this is perhaps a unique fear because of her specific line of work, but as she discusses in “Speaking of Madness,” stigmatization of the mentally ill suggests that this fear is more universal than local, even if it was heightened for her.
In short, it is not just about the experience of mental illness, but about the fact that mental illness is pervasive and continuous—its tentacles reach every aspect of her life, so her experience becomes not just about managing the illness itself, but being in a state of constant awareness of its potential effects.
Family
The theme of family intersects with the theme of love in many ways, but it is worthy of inclusion on its own because of the outsized role family plays in her specific illness. As mentioned above, the role of family for Jamison is one of love, acceptance, and kindness at its best: she repeatedly returns to her mother as a kind, warm, caring force who has helped her through some of her worst moments, and her brother gets special and repeated mention not only for helping her sort out the mess following her initial psychosis, but also for saving her life during her suicide attempt. However, she also demonstrates the negative impact familial relationships can have on one’s struggle with mental illness: hers really began to take root when her once-warm home life began to deteriorate, and her other two family members serve as counterpoints to her mother and brother, as her father descended into his own illness and her sister railed against the things that would help Jamison through her illness.
Family has a special place in this particular narrative, however, because of the genetic component of manic-depressive illness. Manic-depressive illness is hereditary, and as Jamison discusses in “The Troubled Helix,” when she examines her family tree, she can see that it was passed from her father’s side; therefore, not only did the shift in her father’s behavior help to bring out her own illness, but the illness itself was passed along courtesy of her father. In other researchers, too, the genetic component has actually driven the desire to explore the illness and how one might treat or overcome it. Lastly, it raises questions about her own potential children, as at least one physician chastised her for even considering having her own. As mental illness more broadly affects all areas of one’s life, the genetic component of manic-depressive illness makes familial relationships more profound.
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