book:::躁うつ病を生きる

昔薦められた本を調べていたら翻訳がでていることがわかったのでメモ。


K.ジャミソン　著　田中啓子　訳

躁うつ病を生きる

わたしはこの残酷で魅惑的な病気を愛せるか？

◆目 次◆
Part One 自由な青い空へ
太陽に向かって/生きるための教育
Part Two 素敵とはいえない狂気
舞いあがる心/遥かなる土星/肢体安置所/テニュア
Part Three この薬、この愛
将校にして紳士/雨が降っていたよね/狂気を見つめる愛
Part Four 躁うつ病を生きる
狂気について/もつれたらせん/クリニカル・プリヴリッジ/ままならぬ気分
エピローグ


原題：AN UNQUIET MIND : A Memoir of Moods and Madness〈Jamison, Kay Redfield〉
四六判

272頁

定価2520円（税込）

時に生きる力を極限まで活性化し，時に死へと誘う躁うつ病というパラドックス。自ら躁うつを病みつつ治療者でもあるという二重のパラドックスを，愛と勇気に支えられて生き抜いてきた女性医学者の胸打つ記録。発売早々欧米読書界で絶賛の書。


◆本文紹介◆
自分の病気について公にする決心について、わたしはずっと心配しつづけている。けれども三十年以上も躁うつ病を抱えてきたことによって得た強みのひとつは、乗り越えられないほど困難なことはめったにないとおもえるようになったことだ。それはチェサピーク湾が嵐のときにベイブリッジを渡っているようなものだ。前に進むのは怖いかもしれないが、あともどりはできない。詩人ロバート・ローエルのきわめて本質的な提案に、わたしはなにかしら慰められずにはいられない…いっそ何があったか言ってしまえばいじゃないか。（「プロローグ」より）

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icarus　projectページの中にある記事　The Bipolar World　の中でこの本に触れている部分を抜粋。

An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness, by Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison. First published in 1995, in recent years it has become the book everyone reads about manic depression. Jamison is an interesting one: not only is she a psychiatrist but she’s also bipolar herself and has been through the suicidally depressed and delusionally manic mood swings like the most dramatic and tormented of us. She also has quite a flair for writing, with a poetic command of language that left me smiling and reading certain passages over and over again. I would venture to guess that not too many psychiatrists out there use great words like “mercurial,” “cauldronous,” and”glacially.” I found the book well thought-out and beautifully written.

Jamison has another, less well-known book called Touched with Fire: Manic Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament. While more academic and dense, the book attempts to draw out the connection between creative genius and bipolar disorder, using as examples such classic artists and writers as Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, Hermann Hesse, Vincent van Gogh, and Jackson Pollock. I finished the book with the new understanding that I’m a part of a group of people that has been misunderstood and persecuted throughout history, but meanwhile has been responsible for some of the most brilliant of history’s creations. I found the book rewarding in its attempts to tackle difficult questions about the nature of lithium treatment and the price artists pay in deciding whether to take the drugs. And questions about what would happen if people like us were actually weeded out through future genetic technology.

Touched with Fire left me wondering what a book about the relationship between bipolar disorder and creativity would look like if it was a little less academic and if the examples used were more contemporary artists and musicians, people whom (less classically cultured) folks from my generation might have actually heard of and be able to relate to.

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