Soundness vs. Madness: A Comparison of Two Psychologists with Two Very Different Perspectives

           Both Mary Pipher, in her work Letters to a Young Therapist, and Kay Redfield Jamison, in her work An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness, are experts in various branches of psychology. I have read both pieces in their entireties, so I will be commenting on the overall piece and not just the section I chose to analyze originally in class. In Pipher’s letters and Jamison’s memoir, both authors are providing revelations about life based on what they have learned throughout their personal journeys. Pipher and Jamison come from very similar backgrounds: moving around many times throughout childhood (due to their parents being in academic careers or military careers) and had a love for learning and reading growing up. The interesting thing I found when comparing the two is how different these two women are in their lives, actions, thoughts, and words despite having such a similar background and being in the same field of study.

          

  Pipher focuses on the themes of health, wellbeing, time, and nature while she discusses experiences with clients and in her personal life that have given her insights she wants to pass down to her intern. Pipher seems to be obsessed with time—she tends to frame time in comparison with nature throughout her collection of letters and talks about something in each letter that has to do with the season, aging, etc. Pipher explains in her first letter to her intern, “If we conceive of life as a calendar year, beginning with spring and ending in deepest winter, then I am in the late autumn of my life. This season encourages an examination of the past… you are in the early summer of your life. I am curious to see how your season will unfurl”. This statement may reveal her obsession with time—because she is in a time of reminiscing, just as grandparents like to tell their grandchildren stories about their childhood.

            Pipher uses a very casual style of language painted with metaphors and imagery when talking about her major themes. In the very beginning of her first letter, she writes, “Last night I sorted through some old black-and-white photographs…These pictures construct a breadcrumb trail through the forest of time that lies between the me who was born in the Ozark Mountains and the fifty five-year-old me who lives in Nebraska today”. Pipher has a very balanced use of imagery and relaxed style of writing, making it very easy for me to feel connected to her and on the receiving end of her advice-giving.

            Pipher’s tone can differ between light and serious, but it is always conversational: “Being a confidante is part of your breadcrumb trail, as it is for many in our field. An examination of your past can help you know yourself better. Knowing yourself helps with your life as well as your work”. She has a very easygoing, natural pace that is light and feels comfortable to read, almost like a mother or grandmother telling stories with life lessons to a young girl.

          

  Jamison, on the other hand, focuses on much deeper and darker themes and messages. In her memoir, Jamison seems to stick to the themes of illness, mania, and depression. She guides us through the beginning of her career as she falls further and further into the cycle of bipolar disorder. Eventually, she becomes obsessed with the madness in her head and in her life, and this is reflected throughout the entire memoir and even in the title. Early on in the memoir, Jamison explains, “This pattern of shifting moods and energies had a very seductive side to it, in large part because of fitful reinfusions of the intoxicating moods that I had enjoyed in high school. These were quite extraordinary, filling my brain with a cataract of ideas and more than enough energy to give me at least the illusion of carrying them out”. This type of description of her moods and cycles are repeated over and over again throughout the entire memoir.

            Jamison is a very educated woman and she seems to show that in her style of language, whether it is throwing in elaborate diction or technical vocabulary from her years of study, research, and training. She also tends to use more imagery in order to describe her feelings during the periods of mania and depression. For example, she writes, “There was a neuronal pileup on the highways of my brain, and the more I tried to slow down my thinking the more I became aware that I couldn’t. My enthusiasms were going into overdrive”. She puts a simple statement, like her brain processing faster than she could control in this case, into pictures using her knowledge and her specialties in the medical and psychological field.

            I think the most interesting aspect of Jamison’s memoir is her varied tone and pacing throughout the piece. Her tone is serious, dark, and sluggish during the depressive episodes: “Each day I awoke deeply tired, a feeling as foreign to my natural self as being bored or indifferent to life. Those were next. Then a gray, bleak preoccupation with death, dying, decaying, that everything was born but to die, best to die now and save the pain while waiting”. Describing her manic episodes, Jamison’s tone is light, bubbly, and rapid: “but primarily I remember talking to scads of people, feeling that I was irresistibly charming, and sipping around from hors d’oeuvre to hors d’oeuvre, and drink to drink…My memories of the garden party were that I had a fabulous, bubbly, seductive, assured time”. In between the two ellipses, there are sentences that could be broken into a small paragraph. It seems that she is deploying the stream-of-consciousness technique, which I believe best represents our true thought patterns and gives better insights into her personal thought patterns during her episodes of “madness”. I find it somewhat similar to Virginia Woolf’s style of writing, who allegedly suffered from bipolar disorder as well.

            To me, it is very interesting to see the difference in obsessions and lives of two people who would be assumed to be very similar. Both authors focus on what is most present in their lives. For Pipher, that is taking the time to reminisce and to pass her knowledge on to the next generation. For Jamison, that is working through the madness and to help others just like her. It is fascinating to see the differences in writing stemmed from the differences in experiences and thoughts; and that whether the authors meant to or not, the thing most important in their lives is continually repeated throughout their work in their words and images.