Strictly Bipolar

by Darian Leader

Strictly Bipolar is Darian Leader's treatise on the psychological disorder of our times. If the post-war period was called the 'Age of Anxiety' and the 1980s and '90s the 'Antidepressant Era', we now live in Bipolar times. Mood-stabilising medication is routinely prescribed to adults and children alike, with child prescriptions this decade increasing by 400% and overall diagnoses by 4000%. What could explain this explosion of bipolarity? Is it a legitimate diagnosis or the result of Big Pharma marketing? Exploring these questions, Darian Leader challenges the rise of 'bipolar' as a catch-all solution to complex problems, and argues that we need to rethink the highs and lows of mania and depression. What, he asks, do these experiences have to do with love, guilt and rage? Why the spending sprees and the intense feeling of connection with the world? Why the confidence, the self-esteem and the sense of a bright future that can so swiftly turn into despair and dejection? Only by looking at these questions in a new way will we be able to understand and help the person caught between feelings that can be so terrifying and so exhilarating, so life-affirming yet also so lethal. Strictly Bipolar is essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary views of the self, bipolarity and a deeper understanding of manic-depression. Praise for Strictly Bipolar : 'A beautifully thoughtful understanding not just of highs and lows,mania and depression, but of why and how these mechanisms work in our mindsand bodies and how the human subject is coerced todayto embrace a culture of 'bipolarity'' Susie Orbach 'A timely book. Darian Leader's thoughts are more fixated strong-arm interesting, more humane and more persuasive than the profit coercion of the madness industry. Instead of the shoddy reasoning that leads to wrong treatment and over-treatment, he offers illumination and insight; his book is a contribution to a debate, but it could also change lives' Hilary Mantel Darian Leader is a psychoanalyst practising in London and a member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research and of the College of Psychoanalysts - UK. He is the author of What is Madness?, The New Black, Why do women write more letters than they post? , Promises lovers make when it gets late , Freud's Footnotes and Stealing the Mona Lisa , and co-author, with David Corfield, of Why Do People Get Ill? He is Honorary Visiting Professor in the School of Human and Life Sciences, Roehampton University.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Psychoanalysis, Psychiatry, Mental Health, Philosophy, Medicine

112 pages, Paperback

First published May 2, 2013

About the author

Darian Leader is a British psychoanalyst and author. He is a founding member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research (CFAR).

Darian Leader is President of the College of Psychoanalysts, a Trustee of the Freud Museum, and Honorary Visiting Professor in Psychoanalysis at Roehampton University.

From Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darian_L...

Reviews

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've recently been tentatively diagnosed as bipolar, so this remarkably readable and informative book came along at a most opportune time for me. Darian Leader is able to convey complex concepts in lucid, engaging prose and I intend to read more by him.

As for this book, it explores the trend towards diagnoses of bipolarism, the pharmaceutical approach to management and the inner experience and drives of the condition. Bipolarism is more complex than a simple pendulum state, and the manic end of the behavioural curve could be seen as an extreme form of depression. The kind of depression suffered in bipolar disorders is also different from the self-loathing melancholia of a pure depressive. Leader identifies themes like the inability to see shades of grey, the need to perform to gain approval, the experience of being connected with the universe and the converse sense of numb frustration.

Ultimately, this book calls for a more nuanced, case-to-case understanding of bipolarism and stresses a humanistic approach that focuses on the unique biographical factors that have shaped each case over a proliferation of medication, although these have a place too. It helped me understand why I may be bipolar and what may be driving my condition, although a more definite diagnosis will only emerge from further work with my therapist.

If you're interested in what seems to be a defining mental condition of our times, if you have been diagnosed as bipolar or have a loved one who has been diagnosed as such, or if you just want to catch up on current thought on this condition, this short, extremely readable book seems like more or less the thing you could pick up, although I'll definitely seek out and read Stephen Fry's memoirs as soon as I can.

[Bere Tarará · Rating 5 out of 5]

Es un libro con el que cualquier persona bipolar puede identificarse, creí que había sido escrito por un médico, me sorprendió saber que Darian es psicoanalista, también me dejó varias dudas y mucha bibliografía 🤗, ojalá el libro indagara más acerca de la depresión

[Aurélien Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Manic-depressive illness, although serious, used to be rare (roughly 1% of the population). Yet during the past three decades more and more people have not only been diagnosed but, put on a cocktail of medication to address their 'bipolarity'. Now, are such diagnosis genuine? Or is this increase a symptom of something deeper that is, something gone wrong with our mental healthcare systems?

Darian Leader, 'a psychoanalyst (...) and a member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research and of the College of Psychoanalysis' surely throws here a needed debate.

He may have a point in accusing the pharmaceutical companies of marketing an illness so as to sell more drugs to more people:

'Historians of psychiatry have all made the same observation here. It was precisely when the patents began to run out on the biggest-selling mainstream antidepressants in the mid-90s that bipolar suddenly became the recipient of the vast marketing budgets of the pharmaceutical industry.'

I don't know about that and, quite frankly, I feel wary of such argument tantamount (or so I felt) of accusing big pharmas of conspiracy to make profits. I personally don't want to go there.

Where I fully agree with him is, when he denounces modern psychiatry that has redefined manic-depression with ill consequences. First, it has stripped such illness of its specificity ('the flight of ideas, the special sense of connectedness to the world, the oscillation of a fault, and the effort to create a categorical separation of good and bad') to now include a new spectrum of very different mood swings each with their own features. Out with 'manic-depression'! In with the quite new 'bipolar' catch-all label (BP1, BP2, BP3, BP4, BP5, BP6 and their satellites...) which, being too simplistic, doesn't help the understanding of a complex illness. Then because, not only content to have thus airbrushed the very specifics of manic-depression, it has reduced itself to the prescription of pills, as if cocktails of medication were the best if not only way to address mental issues. As he clearly states: it isn't. Understanding patients' histories is also crucial, a human touch that modern psychiatry sadly seems to have dangerously lost touch with.

'Strictly Bipolar' is a short read, challenging at times, but nevertheless a powerful argument for a new approach to treating what remains a very serious illness. Bipolar cannot be dealt with casually thrusting pills, all the while neglecting the human factor. That such a condemnation is needed shows how cold and dehumanised (economically interested?) our healthcare systems, consciously or not, came to be. A must read for anyone interested in the topic.

[sevdah]

One in four Americans is estimated to have some form of bipolar disorder. How did we come to this?

Darian Leader makes a very compelling case against the way we tend to see manic-depression as a question of biology, a thing to be resolved by pharmaceuticals. It's considered to be a whole spectrum now, and he explains why a correct diagnosis is crucial - often times, symptoms are part of other disorders, and we don't really ask enough questions to distinguish one from the other. We aren't treating the disorder, we fine-tune medication - instead of asking what caused the onset of mania or depression, doctors simply ask how the pills have been lately. If something's not a-okay, we simply give you another medication to add to your breakfast.

Understandingly, recovery rates were better in the pre-drug era, when traditional psychotherapy was employed. Manic-depression was seen as the one type of psychosis that would resolve as time goes by, whereas now the diagnosis is immediately followed by a heavy chemical cocktail in the form of pills and more pills, and pills to cure the side effects of those first pills.

After distinguishing the "original" bipolar disorder (and calling it manic-depression), Darian Leader takes on investigating the symptoms and analysing the specific symbols in mania or depression. The constant need of talking, the way language changes its meaning, the need of splitting/contrast, the shopping sprees, the revenge fantasies, the obsessive rituals, the need to blame others, the sense of connectedness to the world, are each analysed with examples from Leader's own practice or memoirs by people with manic-depression.

We need to explore the details and investigate the past in each individual case, if we want to do anything about that disorder at all. It's a great book about something that we'll hear more and more about, I got it on a whim but would definitely recommend it. It's not difficult to read and relatively tiny, which might be a bonus as well.

(Just to be clear, I'm not condoning the use of pills, they could save your life - it's a serious disorder and like any other, it calls for medication. Let's just not forget about how important analysing is, is what I'm saying.)

[Sastha Prakash · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best analysis of manic-depression so far. It gives an account of how the pharmaceutical companies branding this as a biological condition and making it totally drug dependent. This condition has to be studied individually clinically and not brand one with set parameters of the bipolar spectrum. Nowadays this condition is treated with multiple drugs and trying to find the right cocktail, this is totally driven by the drug industry. Now, time is the factor and thereby old clinical approach is forgotten.

Bring in back the good old family practice and do away with the spectrum parameters.

[Dovilė Stonė · Rating 4 out of 5]

Iškentus pradinius autoriaus burbesius ant The Big Phrama ir DSM, laukia tikrai daug psichoanalitinių perliukų. Vertingos autoriaus pastangos atskleisti bipolinio sutrikimo psichodinamiką - kaip asmuo mezga santykį su pasauliu, kitais, savimi, sutrikimu. Autorius labai taikliai diferencijuoja, kuo "bipolinė" depresija skiriasi nuo didžiosios depresijos ir kuo manija skiriasi nuo šizofreninio maniškumo.

Knygoje - daug pavyzdžių iš bipolinį sutrikimą turinčių žymių žmonių prisiminimų, meninių ir dokumentinių filmų, psichoterapinės praktikos. Neįtikėtina, kiek visko autorius surinko ir aprėpė tokiam trumpam tekste. Šie intarpai ryškiai nuspalvina teorines autoriaus prielaidas, bet kartais jų net per daug. Pavyzdys veja teoriją, citata seka kitą citatą ir svarbi mintis pasimeta. Juolab kai tekstas nesuskirstytas į skyrius.

Žodžiu, rekomenduoju kolegoms, turintiems bazinių žinių apie psichoanalizę ir apie psichikos sutrikimus. Bet pacientams greičiausiai nerekomenduočiau.

The guilt that cannot be assuaged or inscribed for one generation will haunt the next, just as a debt is passed on. But this debt does not get settled. It crystallizes neither as paranoia ('the Other is responsible') nor as melancholia ('I am responsible'), see-sawing instead between the highs and lows of the manic-depressive subject. If responsibility departs in the mania, it returns in the depression.

One of the most frequently voiced questions is whether the 'illness' is some kind of foreign body or in fact an intrinsic part of the self. Would the person really be themselves after the proposed chemical excision of their mania? Do the highs and lows reveal or obscure who they really are? Should manic-depression be seen as constituting or as compromising the self? The remarkable ubiquity of these questions perhaps echoes the underlying uncertainty about a responsibility. Not knowing whether the manias and depressions belong to us or not reflects the difficulty of not knowing whether the responsibility is ours or someone else's. And isn't the most common thought after a manic episode precisely to ask 'What have I done?'

Manic-depressive subjects may arrive at key connections in therapy, which have little or zero effect, as if insight had no real value. Perhaps what has made some clinicians despair of working with manic-depression here is infact a clue as to its very logic. When manic, the signifiers that determine one's life are just words among other words, as if their full weight has not been registered. They canbe cast as mere jokes or flippant comments. The depression is then the return of their weight, the massive impact of which is absent in the times of mania.

There is thus a real dilemma in mania of balancing preservation and destruction. Something must be kept safe from one's own rage or from its own self-destructive tendencies. Rather than grappling with the messy, turbulent mixture of love and hate, destruction and admiration, the manic-depressive person opts for a more extreme and ultimately more coherent solution: to separate love and hate categorically, so that one does not contaminate the other. This means, effectively, that the world of the manic-depressive is peopled with devils and angels. It is either copiously full or desperately empty.

Rather than becoming increasingly and exclusively obsessed with the fine-tuning of medication, we need to situate the life of the manic-depressive subject in context, exploring the detail of the highs and the lows and resisting the easy option of a blanket appeal to biology. Manic-depression must be carefully distinguished from vague and unhelpful notions of bipolar spectrum disorders, and diagnosed through its signature motifs: the flight of ideas, the special sense of connectedness to the world, the oscillation of a fault, and the effort to create a categorical separation of good and bad.

[Berna Labourdette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Otro libro buenísimo de Leader donde entrega muchos ejemplos sobre los síntomas de la bipolaridad (por ejemplo: el hecho de robar, derrochar o regalar dinero que tiene mucha gente durante los episodios maníacos ligándolo a una idea de "deuda", dando ejemplos con los casos de Kay Jamison y Stephen Fry, y explicando la suerte de relación extrema que presentan las personas con las palabras y los hechos que les suceden, por la facilidad de palabra en episodios maníacos). Muy bueno.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent little book and a must for serious coaches. It is a joy to read an idea explored in such an intelligent and concise way.
Read alongside madness explained and what's wrong with you, your body never lies and simplicity parenting and you'll get a very healthy world view.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I discovered Darian Leader, belatedly, about a year ago, and he’s definitely become a favorite. He has a great psychoanalytic gift for interpreting symptoms. I love the clarity of his writing His hostility to biological approaches is unnecessary and offhand, and is a repeating flaw in his work.

[Lewis White · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

This book appealed to me the second I saw it. From the back, it describes how it will go in to challenge accepted notions of bipolar disorder, and analyse these in a more therapeutic and less medicalised way. And for the most part, I found that the book did that well. It critiques the watering down of the diagnosis, and the influence of pharmaceutical companies likely had on this. The book also reframes a lot of medicalised issues and ways of thinking about bipolar disorder in a more humanising way. At its best, this book is sincerely psychological and therapeutic in the way it seeks to understand the individual with bipolar disorder on a deeper level.

At its worst, however, it quickly loses sense by delving too deep into psychodynamic thinking. Now, psychoanalysis has its place in the conversation. Indeed, I found myself softening to it as a discipline, despite being a hater of it in general. But my old gripes resurfaced when theories about the deeper goings-on turn to almost conspiratorial lines of reasoning. It’s so close to being on the mark, but it loses itself by trying too hard to explain too much with vague and absolute notions of childhood trauma. The complete dismissal of biological explanations seems premature, even though I also think biology plays a smaller part than is currently societally assumed. It’s just too hard-line.

Which is a shame, and doesn’t fully diminish the good parts of the book. I actually found that it caused me to reflect a lot on my own behaviours (without self diagnosing), and made me rethink a couple of narratives I hold about my mental health.

Anyway, not a bad book, but too staunchly psychoanalytical.

[AG]

The most circumspect part of this book is Leader’s half-hearted tying of the gold rush of bipolar diagnoses to the boom-bust cycle of capital investment. Instead of a biting critique of the mental health industry as a device of capital investment, this book functions as a nice survey of those overlooked attempts by “Old Psychiatry” at defining manic depression in terms of patient history, as a contrast with the pharmaceutical monopoly on definition and diagnosis according to surface-behavior. Leader at times appears the lone solider of a fading empire, erecting an already eroding wall before the rising tide of medicalization. As have been and are the trials of Freudian orthodoxy. Still, a decent guide for those interested in psychoanalytic accounts of manic depression.

[Kurtlu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hem alandan olanların hem de bipolar bozukluk tanısı almış yakını olanların okuması gereken bir kitap. Dsm tanı kriterlerinin uzağında, bir bipoların yaşadıklarının psikodinamik kökenini anlamak ve yıkıcı ya da bencilce dürtüsel davranışların asıl amacını keşfetme olanağı sunuyor. Dili son derece açık ve akıcı, önsöz kısmı sizi korkutmasın. Kitabın içinde bir takım ünlü bipolarla da karşılaşacaksınız, yani biraz magazinle de çeşnilendirilmiş.

[VDB420 · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Strictly Bipolar" by Darian Leader discusses primarily the rebranding of "manic depression " into "bipolar disorder" at the end of the 90ies, but through this rebranding, Leader actually also analyses our overmedicated society. Leader reviews how this change in name, but also how marketing, have transformed the earlier approach into a drug-heavy approach focusing only on drugs and the fine-tuning of these drugs.

To take his words "there is an elephant in the room: the whole conversation is about what the drugs are making them feel rather than what their original feelings had been before taking the drugs".

Leader advocates for a return to the previous approach, but if what he says at the end of the book is true "recovery rates were better in the pre-drug area", who wouldn't?

-----------------------------------

The book makes/references many interesting points; here are a few groundbreaking eye-openers for me:

Leader makes a very extremely interesting point on the connection between manic-depression and language: "In manic states, the person was at the mercy of acoustic and formal connections between words but in the depressive state, it was meaning or signification that governed them". "How strange that the two axes of language - words and meanings - would each emerge in manic-depression in alternate strengths.

He makes also an interesting point related to sociology: "the constellation in manic-depression often involves an aspiration to a better social position".

He makes a very extremely interesting point on manic-depression and cinema: "That's why if you observe the audience during a comedy film, they keep looking not just at the screen but a teach other, whereas if it's a tragedy the gaze remains fixed on the screen".


-------------------------------------

Favourite quotes:

Leader quotes many famous writers. He quotes for instance Stephen Fry for the "highs" phases: "society is too slow for our racing minds, everything is connected in a web of glorious colour, creativity and meaning" (I can't help seeing here Bradley Cooper in "Silver Linings Playbook") "Talking becomes easy , words flow with a newfound fluency"...

"Manic-depression is like an alternating hypertrophy and atrophy of unconscious conscience" (quote of Edward Glover)

" Internet questionnaires allowed self-diagnosis in a few minutes, and, for many people, it seems as if their difficulties finally had a name"...

"Bipolarity is less a pendulum of moods than an effort to keep two poles apart. Cheney tells us that mania is more than a disease: it is a way of thinking"...
Strictly Bipolar

[Purbali · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strictly bipolar is one of the most advanced books ever written on psychotherapy.Though not a conventional book yet it adds to the debate of differentiating the mental disorders namely bipolar disorder and maniac depressive disease.
The author here outline that maniac depressive disorder though very closely resembles bipolar disorder, yet they are not the same. Using very simple examples he has outlined the differences.
Even in psychiatry taught in med schools they are designated as same.
however it is important to understand their differences so as to make changes in the approach towards them.
Manic depressive states can be easily handled through counselling and doesn't necessitate the use of drugs acting on the brain chemical functions.

Throughout the book the author has enforced the differentiating factors through vivid repetition of various personal experiences, and has raised a valid question that is apt for the present world.
The question is not "ARE YOU BIPOLAR" ?
its "HOW BIPOLAR ARE YOU"?

[Mind the Book · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hilary Mantel-blurbad (!) McFreud, d.v.s. en snabbläst faktapocket i ämnet psykologi. Ingår i serien 'A Penguin Special', vad det nu innebär. Baksidestexten utlovade analys av Vår Bipolära Era, den som efterträtt den Antidepressiva Eran.

Insåg för sent att författaren - tydligen verksam vid Roehampton University, ett stenkast härifrån - är djupt troende freudian och representerar det psykodynamiska perspektivet. Drabbas av vredesutbrott vid passager som "It has been argued that manic highs repeat the experience of feeding at the satisfying breast". Tankarna går till en viss fredagkväll på Freudmuséet http://lasdagboken.blogdns.com/2011/i...

Klokt nog citerar Leader andra fallbeskrivningar från Stephen Frys dokumentär och Andy Behrmans 'Electroboy' och jag påminns om att jag även borde läsa 'An Unquiet Mind' av Kay Redfield Jamison ur jobbokhyllan.

[Salome · Rating 4 out of 5]

"We live in an age which pays lip service to history, yet which continually undermines the ties we have to the past."

An interesting read that sheds some light on how it feels to suffer from bipolar disorder. Excerpts from Stephen Fry's "Moab is my Washpot" and the "Fry Chronicles" and other authors' work illustrate personal experiences. Darian Leader then puts those experiences into perspective. Leader - a psychoanalyst in the tradition of Freud - manages to analyze the reasons behind the disorder. Some of his ideas seem too speculative, but overall the book offers a comprehensive overview. It's also well-written and easy to read.

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book frames itself as an attack on Big Pharma and the deliberate pathologisation of people for profit. What it suggests in place of current approaches to mental illness is a return to the psychoanalytic theories of the ninteenth early twentieth century. While there are many problems in current mental health care, retuning to a non-scientific approach is not a helpful suggestion.

Much of the evidence provided for the arguments made in the book comes from celebrity autobiographies and occasional anecdotes about the author's patients.

[Spirohir · Rating 3 out of 5]

Started strongly with an attack on Big Pharma and questioning the categorisation of manic-depression. But it started rambling somewhere around the halfway mark and lost a lot of focus. Still, a good read for a psychoanalyst's view of what manic depression is, and arguing for a more holistic, less statistical and biological treatment for patients.

[Gregory Kaplan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dense and tightly argued, this book closely tracks the dynamics of manic depression (Leader’s preferred label). Most insightful point is that manic depression is linked to some kind of debt that cannot be repaid. One interesting hypothesis or observation is that bipolar disorder is triggered by an unseen or hidden familial trauma, such as a death in the family of origin.

[Janette Townend · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love books that challenge the medical need to medicate all mental health issues and this book shines a light on new thinking on bipolar by listening to those who live with bipolar issues every day. A succinct and thought provoking book I learnt a lot about contemporary views on Bipolar disease which has put to bed my previous knowledge and opened my eyes.

[Damian Konopka · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most real and factual book I have read about bipolar disorder. I learned more than I knew about bipolar, and more about myself. The last 5 pages I read many times over. So much of what Leader writes about will help me handle my illness better moving forward.

[Angie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very rambling, no real organisation to the thoughts presented, and in those thoughts I found nothing particularly original.

[Roberto · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting book with very clear and precise meanings understanding of the manic disorders. This book helps you to understand all these bipolar people that is around us.

[Katarzyna · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has a life changing power. Necessary.

[David Bate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helped me understand a lot about my bipolar.

[Caitlin Daly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strictly Bipolar by Darian Leader provides an interesting yet challenging, and arguably conspiratory embrace of the modern intersection between bipolar disorder and societal pathologisation. When I saw a single copy of this book sitting on the shelf of my local Blackwell's, I was certainly intrigued. At that point I had received bipolar diagnosis a few months ago, and yet had done very little in terms of exploring the bipolar identity beyond online personal accounts. I considered this book a personal starting point into the more objective discussions of the disorder. Unfortunately, it was not the type of book I imagined it to be.

Overall, I was not a fan of this book, but can acknowledge it's merits in providing an alternative contribution to the discussion of bipolar disorder.

Leader's work certainly attempts to provide a comprehensive overview to the development of the bipolar diagnosis. It was intriguing to hear of the early conceptions of bipolar: of Falret and Baillarger's 'circular madness', of Kraeplin's 'manic-depressive insanity', and of the further contribution by continental psychiatrists. What ruins this exploration into the historical context is the frequent obtrusions of Leader's thinly veiled distaste of the pharmaceutical approach. It felt as though the topic of medication was misplaced throughout the discussion of the book, leading his work to often be without streamlined coherence.

That being said, the considerations of modern psychiatry and overmedication is certainly a point to be considered, and a point he largely considers well. His desire for an individualistic, humanist approach is an appealing outlook. Similarly, he condemns the pendular swing conception of mania and depression, instead offering a more nuanced account that takes into consideration the intermediate experiences in between, and surrounding the two extremes. His use of language and accounts of others provides a deeply illustrative account of the many ways in which bipolar is experienced; I am a particularly big fan of the quote below, despite my general distaste for the psychoanalytic approach to bipolar:

"As the psychoanalyst Edward Glover once remarked, manic-depression is like an alternating hypertrophy and atrophy of an 'unconscious conscience'."

As Leader also argues, it is not out of the realm of possibility that the increase of the bipolar diagnosis possibly coincides with the marketing of the illness by pharmaceutical companies. Unfortunately, the author makes frequent shifts into a more aggressive and conspiratory accusation towards "Big Pharma", and his overt suggestion that modern medication is largely motivated by company profits I believe is tentative at best.

Where I begin to take serious issue however, is his introduction of Freudian psychoanalysis. Naturally, it comes with the territory of the book, seeing as his background is in psychoanalysis, with particular focus on Freud. I am by no means well read on the psychoanalytical method, yet even so, certain passages of the book I intuitively disagreed with. The author makes frequent arguments that a bipolar person's development of the disorder is largely factored in by personal experience. He argues that mania is a person's way of making up for a deficit in their childhood, and that the subsequent depressive episode returns to the guilt of what one did whilst manic. Upon further research after reading this book, I now deeply disagree with Leader's suggestion that bipolar disorder is something learned, when this argument is the antithesis of what contemporary research shows.

By the end of the book, I could gather a general appreciation for his desire to treat patients within a medical system that holds more warmth and appreciation for the human factor. However, a more coherent and especially grounded approach, seeing that his book is largely based on testimonies, would have made for a more satisfying and comprehensive read.

As my first introduction to analytical conceptions of bipolar disorder, I cannot bring myself to rank it too harshly, but I certainly do not see it as the praiseworthy book that critics suggest it to be.

[Nadia Sebaali · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Strictly Bipolar" is a thought-provoking and informative book about bipolar disorder that sheds light on the realities of living with this condition. The author, Darian Leader, draws on his own experiences as a psychoanalyst and his interactions with patients to offer unique insights into the challenges of managing bipolar disorder. While I appreciated the book's approach to exploring the complexities of the condition, I found the writing to be at times dense and difficult to follow. Additionally, some of the arguments presented were not fully supported by evidence, which left me feeling skeptical. Overall, I give "Strictly Bipolar" three out of five stars - while it has its strengths, it may not be the most accessible or well-supported book on the topic.

[Marco García Panizo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dos estrellas porque se lee ameno.
Charlatanería psicoanalítica, tan esotérica y enemiga de lo científico como suele ser. El paisano se tira todo el libro sacando testimonios descontextualizados y haciendo la lectura que mejor le viene de ellos.
Adolece de una inquietante aversión a la biología y la farmacología; no me sorprendería encontrarle buscando la explicación de un tumor cerebral en los conflictos irresolutos de la infancia.

[Blaze-Pascal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short but sweet review on the clinical diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Many stories of what the experience is like, and some arguments against how the heavily pharmaceutical led focus of treatment may effect the way one lives the experience of being bipolar. I don't think he's obvious with what he's arguing but an interesting read none the less.

[Cal Davie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A charming little book which really highlights the variety of experiences of those diagnoses with bipolar disorder. Very interesting angle from his psychoanalytic background, seeking to gain understanding of the person and not simply dismiss any bipolar experience as a "sickness" needing medicating.