Touched with Fire

by Kay Redfield Jamison

From virtually all perspectives—early Greek philosopher to twentieth-century specialist—there is agreement that artistic creativity and inspiration involve, indeed require, a dipping into prerational or irrational sources while maintaining ongoing contact with reality and “life at the surface.” The degree to which individuals can, or desire to, “summon up the depths” is among the more fascinating individual differences. Many highly creative and accomplished writers, composers, and artists function essentially within the rational world, without losing access to their psychic “underground.” Others, the subject of this book, are likewise privy to their unconscious streams of thought, but they must contend with unusually tumultuous and unpredictable emotions as well. The integration of these deeper, truly irrational sources with more logical processes can be a tortuous task, but, if successful, the resulting work often bears a unique stamp, a “touch of fire,” for what it has been through.

In addition to the changes in mood and thought that are brought about by mania and depression (and the experiences—both good and bad—gleaned from the pain intrinsic to melancholia), the less dramatic, day-to-day aspects of the manic-depressive temperament can provide artistic advantage as well. For individuals who live with moods that change often and intensely, life is a tempestuous experience. The manic-depressive, or cyclothymic, temperament, carries with it the capacity to react strongly and quickly; it is, in a biological sense, an alert and excitable system. It responds to the world with a wide range of emotional, perceptual, intellectual, behavioral, and energy changes, and it creates around itself both the possibilities and chaos afforded by altered experiences and fluctuating tempos. In a sense depression is a view of the world through a glass darkly, and mania is a shattered pattern of views seen through a prism or kaleidoscope: often brilliant but generally fractured. Where depression questions, ruminates, and is tentative, mania answers with vigor and certainty. The constant transitions in and out of these constricted and then expansive thoughts, subdued and then violent responses, grim and then ebullient moods, withdrawn from and then involving relationships, cold and then fiery states—and the rapidity and fluidity of moves across and into such contrasting experiences—can be painful and confusing. Such chaos, in those able ultimately to transcend it or shape i...

“What shocks the virtuous philosopher delights the chameleon poet,”