Manic-depressive illness can confer advantages on both the individual and society. The disease, in both its severe and less severe forms, appears to convey its advantages not only through its relation...
Knew better than to assume a straight shot at happiness: If we see a light at the end of the tunnel, he said, it’s the light of an oncoming train.
Freedom from the control imposed by medication loses its meaning when the only alternatives are death and insanity.
Before you can conquer a beast you first must make it beautiful.
You're frightened, and you're frightening, and you're 'not at all like yourself but you will be soon,' but you know you won't.
Two other patients were waiting for their doctors, which only added to my sense of indignity and embarrassment at finding myself with the roles reversed--character building, no doubt, but I was beginn...
Time will pass; these mood will pass; and I will, eventually, be myself again. But then, at some unknown time, the electrifying carnival will come back into my mind.
This polarization of two clinical states flies in the face of everything that we know about the cauldronous, fluctuating nature of manic-depressive illness; it ignores the question of whether mania is...
The combination of curiosity and joy so characteristic of scientific work calls to mind the galumphing quality of exuberant play: watching, chasing, an idea first up one path and then down another, tu...
The clinical hallmark of manic-depressive illness is its recurrent, episodic nature. Byron had this in an almost textbook manner, showing frequent and pronounced fluctuations in mood, energy, sleep pa...
Recklessness springs naturally from overoptimism. Left to its own highly persuasive devices, exultant mood will nearly always trump rational thought. It is in the amalgam of fever and reason that geni...
Patient sees [lithium] medication as a promise of a cure, and a means of suicide if it doesn’t work. She fears that by taking it she will risk her last resort
Often, people want both to live and to die; ambivalence saturates the suicidal act.
Naquela noite, enquanto esperava (bordando, vendo a neve cair, ouvindo Chopin e Elgar) que meu inglês apaixonado e instável aparecesse, eu de repente me conscientizei de como a música me parecia clara...
Ironically, it is usually the doctors who are the most competent and conscientious who feel the most sense of failure and pain.
I have seen the breadth and depth and width of my mind and heart and seen how frail they both are, and how ultimately unknowable they both are.
I also started giving Christmas lectures to the house staff and clinic staff that focused on music written by composers who had experienced severe depression or manic-depressive illness. These informa...
Given that, it turned out to be unnervingly easy to keep my friends and family at psychological bay: To be sure, wrote Hugo Wolf, I appear at times merry and in good heart, talk, too, before others qu...
From the time I woke up in the morning until the time I went to bed at night, I was unbearably miserable and seemingly incapable of any kind of joy or enthusiasm. Everything--every thought, word, move...
Feeling normal for any extended period of time raises hopes that turn out, almost invariably, to be writ on water.