Mood-disorder specialist Jamison (Psychiatry/Johns Hopkins) comes clean about her own mood disorder: manic-depression. Less bitter and defensive than Kate Millett (The Loony-Bin Trip, 1990) in writing of this illness, Jamison has one thing in common with her: the reluctance to take lithium, despite her knowledge as a professional that it would control her extremes of mood. Why the refusal? Because, Jamison says, the periods of mild mania, or hypomania, are ``absolutely intoxicating states that gave rise to great personal pleasure, an incomparable flow of thoughts, and a ceaseless energy.'' Jamison now takes her lithium dutifully, however, after being hobbled for years by cycles of extreme mania (sleepless nights, mental chaos, shopping sprees with bills totaling over $30,000) and suicidal depression. The illness began to manifest itself after the delicate balance of her family life was disrupted. In a highly fluid, readable memoir, Jamison wonderfully describes her childhood as an Air Force brat, capturing both the ``romance and discipline'' of military life. But in 1961, when she was 15, Jamison's father retired from the Air Force and the family moved to California. Her father, an imaginative, playful, charismatic man, began displaying signs of manic- depression, and a few years later, so did Jamison. Always passionate, curious, independent-minded, she was now subject to crippling mood switches as she began a successful academic career and passed through a failed marriage, love affairs, and a new marriage. Jamison is convincing on the seductiveness of hypomania. But the author of Touched with Fire (1993), which claimed a link between the artistic temperament and manic-depression, goes too far here in claiming a superiority of experience for herself: that she has lived more truly and intensely than folks whose moods are better calibrated (``I have run faster, thought faster, loved faster than most''). But overall, a well-written, vivid depiction of a devastating mental illness. (First printing of 75,000; Literary Guild alternate selection; author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 18, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-44374-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Gilligan (Center for the Study of Violence/Harvard Medical School) zeroes in on the pitch-black emptiness within America's murderers before inexplicably letting his target move out of focus. To stem the contagion of violence, Gilligan believes, America needs to understand both its root causes and the social pathogens that spread it. He points to civilization's patriarchal structure, which entails a code of honor that imposes a crippling burden of shame. When the author confines himself to the murderers he met in the ``underworld,'' or maximum-security prisons (he served as head of mental-health services for the Massachusetts prison system), Gilligan's theories gain strength. For instance, he notes that, despite more shelters for battered women, the proportion of domestic-violence deaths has doubled, because their murderers ``are precisely the men who experience a life-death dependency on their wives and an overwhelming shame because of it.'' He castigates the death penalty not just as cruel but as ineffective, since it feeds a killer's desire for punishment. Moreover, one of his prescriptions—eliminating the illiteracy that fosters many criminals' sense of shame—is practical. However, the effects of Gilligan's subtle studies of killers are lost when he applies his lessons on a broader scale to an America that he says imposes ``structural violence'' on the disadvantaged. Gilligan's call to reform America's socioeconomic structure is less a prescription than a fantasy, and he downplays the fact that most of the lower class never becomes part of the criminal class. This critique has more than a share of the politically correct, as when the author notes that no other nation or culture ``has inflicted more collective violence on its victims than white (or European) Americans have inflicted on both native Americans and African- Americans over the past five centuries.'' A deeply compassionate survey of America's contemporary Desolation Row—but more than one reader will be wishing for a little more tough love. (First serial to Atlantic Monthly)
Pub Date: April 2, 1996
ISBN: 0-399-13979-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1996
Psychologist Pipher (Reviving Ophelia, 1994) provides a sharp, often unsettling critique of many of the values that currently define our lives, coupled with solid advice for rebuilding families. Maintaining that ``much of our modern unhappiness involves a crisis of meaning and values,'' Pipher contends that technology and consumerism have become the gods of the '90s. Hours spent viewing cable television programs and commercials not only discourage meaningful communication among family members, it also leaves the viewers with the impression that happiness can be purchased. This, in turn, triggers such a need for money that work—even when meaningless or despised—becomes the individual's raison d'àtre. True happiness, insists Pipher, comes from meaningful, ethical work. What people really need is ``protected time and space'' and the need to reconnect with one another and the outside world. Simple rituals, such as saying grace at dinner and unplugging the telephone and television, can ``hallow family time.'' Shifting the lens to her own profession, Pipher further contends that most therapists only harm their clients by focusing on their particular neuroses while ignoring the negative impact of contemporary culture. Therapists can be most helpful by encouraging the building of family connections, as well as links to the natural world and community resources. Pipher supplements her thesis with case studies. We hear of families that thrive when a parent cuts back on work hours and when a disaffected teen discovers the joys of helping the elderly. Lively, straightforward, and somewhat subversive, The Shelter of Each Other offers hope for the American family in a time that challenges its viability. (First printing of 125,000; first serial to Good Housekeeping; Book-of-the-Month Club main selection; $100,000 ad/promo; author tour)
Pub Date: April 16, 1996
ISBN: 0-399-14144-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1996
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