Essay; Bipolar Disorder

Touched With Fire – Kay Redfield Jamison;
BIPOLAR; Blessing or Burden?

NOTE: "TWF" = 'Touched with Fire'

ALL QUOTES INCLUDED ARE FROM "TOUCHED WITH FIRE"

Summary of Ideas Explored & Raised/ Reflection on reading/ Key Points.


Bipolar disorder, along with various other mental illnesses, has long been perceived as an mysterious yet threatening disease, which manifests in extremes of temperament; - ranging from ecstatic highs, to debilitating lows, often seasonal in nature. The link between the artistic temperament and bipolar disorder is affirmed by exploring family histories of famous sufferers, more conclusively seen through the overlapping temperaments; certain characteristics central to both the bipolar afflicted sufferer and the artistically inclined. It has long been perceived that mental derangement, or insanity, has been a gift of the Gods, transcending human capabilities. It is this notion of a “divine madness” which creates controversy surrounding the rapid development of scientific breakthrough; such as the Human Genome Project, which attempts to control such diseases by first identifying genes affiliated to the disorder.

It has been proven that bipolar is a hereditary disease; familial lines tainted by mental illnesses include that of Virginia Wolf, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, Hermen Melville, etc. Edgar Allen Poe, in his Fall of the House of Usher, states such ‘nervous agitation…(the) mental disorder which oppressed him” was indeed “a family evil, and one for which he despaired to find a remedy-” This brings forward the many ethical issues surrounding bipolar; if individuals could be treated, more worryingly sterilized on the grounds of a mental disorder; would humanity itself be starved of the benefits offered by individuals of this sort.

If a fetus, through a number of diverse, not to mention intrusive, prenatal tests, was discovered to contain the gene for bipolar; would it be justified to enforce abortion of the unborn child? Such moral issues, as frightening and far-off as they seem, have already tainted humanity; - provinces in China ordering those with a history of hereditary mental illness to be sterilized, and if any pregnancy should occur, an obligatory abortion should follow.

Moreover, the societal benefit of bipolar, at the expense of bipolar patients in their sufference, deems it irresponsible for science to intrude and eradicate the genes for the disease if possible. Moreover, gene therapy is often contradictory to contemporary belief; - it is not extremely accurate; the presence of the gene does not act definitively – it is not guaranteed that simply having the gene will result in the individual attaining the disease. Dr John Robertson, who in his studies of Edgar Allan Poe, states it well in saying that upon eradication of such genes, we would be left with simply with

“A race of stoics – men without imagination, individuals incapable of enthusiasms, brains without personality, souls without genius…”

Edvard Munch remarks how integral his illness was to his artworks as well as to his person; “A German once said to me; ‘But if you could rid yourself of many of your troubles’ to which I replied “They are a part of me, and my art. They are indistinguishable from me, and it would destroy my art. I want to keep those sufferings’ Virginia Woolf also reiterates the value of her unstable frame of mind as she states;

“As an experience, madness is terrific, I can assure you, and not to be sniffed at; and in its lava I still find most of the things I write about. It shoots our of one everything shaped, final, not in mere driblets, as sanity does”


Evidently, this raises many questions; Does the person define the illness, or does the Illness define the person? At the same time, putting aside the master/slave relationship; it also questions whether there could exist a sort of symbiosis – as the inextricable link between the disease and the individual could be used to the benefit of one. The individual thereby lives with the illness, a love/hate relationship with an entity that captivates the mind and soul so completely. Many artists perceive the wide range and extremes of emotion central to not only the ability to produce creative work, but also to the human condition itself. Hence, there has been some preference to avoid lithium, missing the ‘highs’ of the mania, contrasting the unusually stable and ‘flattened’ world induced by pharmaceutical means.

Many patients choose to settle for “a cyclothymic life of highs and lows, rather than a apathetic middle-of-the-road mood state achieved through the use of lithium carbonate”
(Drs P. Polatin and R.Fieve, 1971)

It should be noted however, that Bipolar alone does not guarantee works of substance, great masterpieces stemming from the creativity enticed by the illness. There is no doubt that the illness expands the imagination, yet this provides ‘a touch of fire’ only when the temperament accompanies artistic ability. In this case, the disease furthers but does not create the individual’s ability to form any masterpiece of literature, music, art etc. Bipolar has the ability to further the imagination due to rapid increase in speed per se, that is, the quantity of thoughts and associations racing through the mind. It is this increase, which consequently leads to a heightened quality of thoughts, moving from the convergent thinking of ‘normal’ brain function, to the ‘divergent’ thinking so prominent in the manic-depressive state. This result in broadened ideas – no longer is one answer granted to a given question/situation, rather the mind creates various branches of thought, loosely linking various ideas together – ultimately resulting in ideas which transcend earthly, ‘rational’ thinking. It is this resourcefulness of the Bipolar mind which allows creativity to flourish – ideas, often grandiose, developed during the ‘manic’ stage is given logic during a milder stage, or light depression.

It must be realised, however, that inspiration and creativity “indeed require, a dipping into prerational or irrational sources while maintaining ongoing contact with reality and life at the surface…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” TWF, Page 104.

“In order for far-flung or chaotic thoughts to be transformed into works of art, original and meaningful connections (linkings, in the Aristotelian sense of ‘dissimilarity with similarity’) must be made. Here again grandiosity and a related cosmic sense often combine with acute observational powers to make otherwise unimaginable emotional and intellectual leaps” TWF, page 110.

The unnatural train of thought, diversity of ideas, and flexibility of the imagination to jump and correlate seemingly abstract ideas, is what fuels creativity. Moreover, the heightened sense of emotion also plays a central role in artistic temperament, hence highlighting the overlapping nature of the bipolar temperament with that of the artistic temperament, differing in only the individuals ability to tolerate “extremes of emotion and to live on close terms with darker forces” TWF, Page 104.