Jamison finds the academic structure as a whole to be unaccommodating towards her illness. She tells us, “…it is a very real adjustment to blend into a three-piece-suit schedule, which, while comfortable to many, is new, restrictive, seemingly less productive, and maddeningly less intoxicating” (92). Jamison brings us back to the issue of “crip time” and how the regulated schedules of the academic setting don’t always allow for full participation of those who suffer from a mental illness. Jamison also explains how she didn’t always do well in her courses as an undergraduate because “university administrators do not consider the pronounced seasonal changes in behaviors and abilities that are part and parcel of the lives of most manic-depressives” (49). She laments the disjunction between the pace of the academic world and the pace of her illness and how she, situated between both temporalities, must find a way to negotiate their oppositions.
Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness I just finished reading Kay Redfield Jamison’s An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness, which describes her long journey with manic-depressive illness. It was a wonderful read and really depicted the roller coaster ride that comes with mental illness-its highs and lows, triumphs and defeats, beauty and despair. Anne and I are particularly interested in talking about An Unquiet Mind because it very much relates to Margaret Price’s Mad at School. Jamison, who works in psychiatry, reveals throughout her book the struggles of coping with her own illness in the academic setting, and more specifically the field of psychology.
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