Event

KAY REDFIELD JAMISON @ Berkeley Arts & Letters

Thursday, October 22

KAY REDFIELD JAMISON
Nothing Was The Same

Perhaps no one but Kay Redfield Jamison -- who combines the acute perceptions of a psychologist with elegant and passionate writing -- could bring such a delicate touch to the subject of losing a spouse to cancer. Jamison looks back at her relationship with her husband, Richard Wyatt, a renowned scientist who battled debilitating dyslexia to become one of the foremost experts on schizophrenia. And with her characteristic honesty, candor, wit, and simplicity, she describes his death, her own long, difficult struggle with grief, and her efforts to distinguish grief from depression.

But she also recalls the great joy that Richard brought her during the nearly twenty years they had together. Wryly humorous anecdotes mingle with bittersweet memories of a relationship that was passionate and loving -- if troubled on occasion by her manic-depressive (bipolar) illness -- as Jamison reveals the ways in which her husband encouraged her to write openly about her mental illness and, through his courage and grace, taught her to live fully.

Kay Redfield Jamison is Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine as well as Honorary Professor of English at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. She is the author of An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness, Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide, and Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament. She is coauthor of the standard medical text on manic-depressive illness and author or coauthor of more than one hundred scientific papers about mood disorders, creativity, and psychopharmacology.

7:30 PM
Berkeley Arts & Letters @ The Hillside Club
2286 Cedar Street, Berkeley
$12 advance ($6 students with ID advance)/$15 door