Manic Depression and Creativity (ISBN 1573922412)

Disappointed:
As a person with manic depression, I found this book lacking tact. Why refer to the person in question as a "maniac"? Why always refer to the person in question as "he" -- except for the one time the authors pointed out that female "maniacs" often erroneously believe that men are in love with them. (Well! I never! I'll have you know that men ARE in love with me.) It was as if the authors assumed that no person with the illness would actually pick up the book and read it. I felt the whole time as if I were eavesdropping on a conversation about people like me but from which people like me were excluded. (I also found it striking that although the authors chose 4 great men to write about, the cover of the book has on it a sad and scary-looking crazy woman.) I might have excused all that if the information had been valuable (it was quite old hat) or if the prose had been particularly eloquent (it wasn't) or if there had been anything really interesting about the book. I ordered it hoping to add to my own understanding of my creativity. I was disappointed. There are much better books on this subject. Check out Kay Redfield Jamison's Touched With Fire.

1 of the BEST books on Manic Depression:
By far, this is one of the best books I've read on manic depression. I should know -I'm a PhD-MD cannidate at the university that is the brother school to the college (sister school) I attended- (Ivy L, 7 Sisters, CT, MA -figure it out...;)- in psychiatric medicine, focusing on mood disorders and substance abuse. I'm also a person living with Bipolar I and who is sick and tired of everyone yapping about Bipolar Illness and not doing much research on it (which is pointed out at the very end of the book.) However, this book is a refreshing surprise in a sea of far too many "I have BP disorder, read MY book b/c I'll tell YOU how to survive!!!" narratives. First, it begins with an overview of what manic-depression is; all of it's various components , thus pointing out how 2 different people can be classified as being Bipolar I or II and present entirely different symptoms of the illness, yet these symptoms are what classfies them as a persons who suffer from the same classification of the disease (BP I or II.) As a side note, BP III, for me & many others I know, is a newly- created classification (it's not even noted in the DSM-IV) and b/c BP III is brought on by the use of drugs; most notabley steroids, it also goes away when the use of the drug stops. Most feel as if the notion of the classification of BP III is paradoxical, but more so, silly. A TV personality came out and told the world about BP III and her horrible struggles with it (mostly on the depressive side) brought on by her use of a steroid for another ailment. It is a disease that is simply awful -no question. However, using a prominent position in the media and the support of a small group of psychologists and other therapists to proport that BP III is as devastating and comparable to the other 2 classifications is absurd. While the disease has been present for thousands of years and just as many cases documented, even in 2005, the psychiatric world does not have a handle on either BP I or BP II. We're just beginning to learn what treatments work, which drugs are more effective, and so on. Thankfully, all of this is not discussed in this text -nor are the diagnoses of BP I vs. BP II -technically. The book refers to manic-depression as an illness and does not call BP into play. This is one possibly confusing part. That is, if the reader were to compare the text to other current texts in which manic depression is referred to as Bipolar Illness with 2 distinct classifications, and of course, occassionally a 3rd, this book may offset or confuse the information provided by another text due to its vagueness and non-technical approach to the focal discussion of what the illness is. Nonetheless, the authors do an incredible job of tearing apart every bit of the disease so most every reader is able to understand what manic-depression consists of. The 4 overviews of the historical genius' they use to demonstrate how the illness can manifest itself in various ways is wonderful. It also proves the point that hey, you get the bad with the good. And the follow-up, which reinforces the distinct attributes of the illness in a more medical way, is great. The authors further interwine bits and pieces of the lives of other manic-depressives, both past and present, into the text. This aids in helping the reader discern one type of depression from another or one type of mania from another - especially for those who are not familiar with classical and historical persons. For example, the reader will learn about the tragic life of Van Gogh and also read a bit about Marilyn Monroe so if one is not quite familiar with one personality, they probably will be with the other. Again, this helps in coming to an overall understanding of the disease for those who are not familiar with it. So few books on Bipolar Illness are well written to the degree that this book is, simply because not enough is known about the disease even now. Once again, the authors discuss this issue and how essential it is that BP truly needs so much more attention and research applied to its many tenticles. The authors are able to construct a very well-rounded, very real picture of what this illness is and how devastating it is. If you do not suffer from the illness, are not a doctor who studies it, or have been involved VERY closely with someone who suffers from the disease, but are curious about it, this is a great read. My fiancee read it and now understands how and why my moods oscillate the way they do. Other books from my "BP Library" have been of no help to him or my family at all. This one was. I believe that the combination of the narratives and medical chapters make the book enjoyable and not tedious. Furthermore, you're not reading about how to solve a problem -which so many books on BP illness attempt to do. Currently, there is no cure for BP I or II but there are ways to treat the illness so the effects of the disease are less crippling. This text tells you like it is and recognizes that real people suffer from it; probably many more than are accounted for. If nothing else, you can read it in a few hours, at the beach, what have you. Personally, I -and many of my colleagues-agree this is one of the better books on the market at the present time to help people truly understand what Bipolar people go through on both a grand and minute scale.

Good Biographical Conjecture:
This book is an essential building block in understanding artistic temperment and the fomentation of (recognized) genius. The authors have eschewed egalitarian premises and psychoanalytical posturing to bring the reader as unbiased a viewpoint as possible while still offering correlations between typical mood affectivity and the amusing/confusing personalities of these four luminaries. After reading this book, my interest in the subjects -- of these specific historical characters and of the psychiatric relationship of genius to mood disorder -- was most assuredly heightened. I'd qualify this book as appropriate for any level of scholarship. It's entertaining, informative and contains some profoundly original thoughts, which are always a pleasure to encounter. My one great criticism of the book is based on the Dr.'s wholesale endorsement of psychotropic drug therapy which I find to be a little professionally self-serving and irresponsible coming from a profession mired in misdiagnoses that labors under gross inaccuracies proliferated at the academic publish-or-perish research journal level and, in their compounded professional ignorance, they rely on patently dangerous drug-based therapies as all-encompassing Panaceas, which they are not.

Good Biographical Conjecture:
This book is an essential building block in understanding artistic temperment and the fomentation of (recognized) genius. The authors have eschewed egalitarian premises and psychoanalytical posturing to bring the reader as unbiased a viewpoint as possible while still offering correlations between typical mood affectivity and the amusing/confusing personalities of these four luminaries. After reading this book, my interest in the subjects, both of these specific historical characters and of the psychiatric relationship of genius to mood disorder, was most assuredly heightened. I'd qualify this book as appropriate for any level of scholarship. It's entertaining, informative and contains some profoundly original thoughts, which is always a pleasure to encounter. My one great criticism of the book is based on the Dr.'s wholesale endorsement of psychotropic drug therapy which I find to be a little professionally self-serving coming from a profession mired in misdiagnoses that labors under gross inaccuracies at the academic research publish-or-perish journal level and, in their compounded professional ignorance, they rely on patently dangerous drug-based therapies as all-encompassing Panaceas, which they are not.

Informative:
I found the information contained in the front section of the book to be disturbing in that what I believed to be personality traits are instead bundles of pathology. This is probably because I have bipolar and I thought that the positive features of my life were things that I chose to happen. Not so.... I was disappointed in the paucity of citations, creating difficulty in determining what statements were the opinion of the authors' or statements that were supported by other authors or research. The bibliography was disappointing. I found the Jamison book on creativity to be much more thourough. All that aside, I like reading it.