Exuberance: The Passion for Life

by Kay Redfield Jamison

  95. A study of 180 nuns: D. D. Danner, D. A. Snowdon, and W. V. Friesen, “Positive Emotions in Early Life and Longevity: Findings from the Nun Study,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80: 804–13 (2001).

  A study of 839 patients referred to the Mayo Clinic obtained similar results. Patients who were assessed as optimistic by a series of psychological and physical tests had a 19 percent increase in their expected life span when compared with patients who were classified as pessimists. See T. Maruta, R. Colligan, M. Malinchoc, and K. Offord, “Optimists vs. Pessimists: Survival Rates Among Medical Patients over a 30-Year Period,” Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 75: 140–43 (2000).

  96. “passion, imagination, self-will”: William Hazlitt, “On the Love of Life,” in The Collected Works of William Hazjitt, ed. A. R. Waller and Arnold Glover (London: J. M. Dent & Co., 1902), vol. I, p. 3.

  97. “Lively passions”: David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature (1739; Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1992), p. 427.

  98. more likely to make decisions: D. Aderman, “Elation, Depression, and Helping Behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 24: 91–101 (1972); A. M. Isen and B. Means, “The Influence of Positive Affect on Decision-Making Strategy,” Social Cognition, 2: 18–31 (1983); M. Carlson, V. Charlin, and N. Miller, “Positive Mood and Helping Behavior: A Test of Six Hypotheses,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55: 211-29 (1988); R. A. Baron and J. Thomley, “A Whiff of Reality: Positive Affect as a Potential Mediator of Pleasant Fragrances on Task Performance and Helping,” Environment and Behavior, 26: 766–84 (1994); A. M. Isen, in M. Lewis and J. M. Haviland-Jones, Handbook of Emotions (New York: Guilford, 2000), pp. 417–35.

  99. more actively explore: N. H. Frijda, The Emotions (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1986); B. L. Fredrickson, “The Broaden-and-Build Theory of Positive Emotions,” American Psychologist, 56: 216–26 (2001).

  100. a larger number of responses: A. M. Isen and K. A. Daubman, “The Influence of Affect on Categorization,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47: 1206–17 (1984); A. M. Isen, M. S. Johnson, E. Mertz, and G. F. Robinson, “The Influence of Positive Affect on the Unusualness of Word Associations,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48: 1413–26 (1985); A. M. Isen, K. A. Daubman, and G. P. Nowicki, “Positive Affect Facilitates Creative Problem Solving,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52: 1122–31 (1987); A. M. Isen, “On Creative Problem Solving,” in Affect, Creative Experience, and Psychological Adjustment, ed. S. Russ (Philadelphia: Taylor and Francis, 1999), pp. 3–17.

  101. in a global way: A. M. Isen, “Positive Affect, Cognitive Process, and Social Behavior,” in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, ed. L. Berkowitz (San Diego: Academic Press, 1987), pp. 203–53; H. Bless and K. Fiedler, “Affective States and Knowledge,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21: 766–78 (1995); M. R. Basso, B. K. Schefft, M. D. Ris, and W. N. Dember, “Mood and Global-Local-Visual Processing,” Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 2: 249–55 (1996); G. L. Clore, R. S. Wyer, B. Dienes, K. Gasper, C. Gohm, and L. Isbell, “Affective Feelings as Feedback: Some Cognitive Consequences,” in Theories of Mood and Cognitive, ed. L. L. Martin and G. L. Clore (Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum, 2001), pp. 27–62; K. Gasper and G. L. Clore, “Attending to Local Processing of Visual Information,” Psychological Science, 13: 34–40 (2002).

  102. “Not by constraint”: Henry David Thoreau, June 23, 1840, journal entry, in Journal, vol. 1: 1837–1844, gen. ed. J. C. Broderick, ed. E. H. Witherell, W. L. Howarth, R. Sattelmeyer, and T. Blanding (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981), p. 140.

  103. In a typical study: T. R. Greene and H. Noice, “Influence of Positive Affect upon Creative Thinking and Problem Solving in Children,” Psychological Reports, 63: 895–98 (1988).

  104. incompatible with anxiety: G. Mandler, “Stress and Thought Processes,” in Handbook of Stress: Theoretical and Clinical Aspects, ed. L. Goldberger and S. Breznitz (New York: Free Press, 1982), pp. 88–104; G. Keinan, N. Friedland, and Y. Ben-Porath, “Decision Making Under Stress: Scanning of Alternatives Under Physical Threat,” Acta Psychologia, 64: 219–28 (1987); D. Derryberry and M. A. Reed, “Anxiety and Attentional Focusing: Trait, State and Hemispheric Influences,” Personality and Individual Differences, 25: 745–61 (1998).

  105. the way in which cognitive material is organized: F. G. Ashby, A. M. Isen, and K. Turken, “A Neuropsychological Theory of Positive Affect and Its Influence on Cognition,” Psychological Review, 106: 529–50 (1999).

  106. Surges in dopamine: ibid.

  107. nor is it inconsistent across studies: Not all investigators find that positive mood necessarily improves cognitive functioning; for example, G. Kaufman and S. K. Vosburg, “ ‘Paradoxical’ Mood Effects on Creative Problem Solving,” Cognition and Emotion, 11: 151–70 (1997); L. Clark, S. D. Iverson, and G. M. Goodwin, “The Influence of Positive and Negative Mood States on Risk Taking, Verbal Fluency, and Salivary Cortisol,” Journal of Affective Disorders, 63: 179–87 (2001).

  108. It is relatively common: The lifetime prevalence for the severe form of bipolar illness is about 1 percent, but estimates for the milder forms range from 5 to nearly 9 percent. L. N. Robins and D. A. Regier, eds., Psychiatric Disorders in America: The Epidemiologic Catchment Area Study (New York: Free Press, 1991); R. C. Kessler, D. R. Rubinow, C. Holmes, J. M. Abelson, and S. Zhao, “The Epidemiology of DSM-III-R Bipolar I Disorder in a General Population Survey,” Psychological Medicine, 29: 1079–89 (1997); J. Angst, “The Emerging Epidemiology of Hypomania and Bipolar II Disorder,” Journal of Affective Disorders, 50: 143–51 (1998); L. L. Judd and H. S. Akiskal, “The Prevalence and Disability of Bipolar Spectrum Disorders in the U.S. Population: Re-analysis of the ECA Database Taking into Account Sub-threshold Cases,” Journal of Affective Disorders, 73: 123–31 (2003).

  109. “the blood becomes changed”: quoted in F. Walker, Hugo Wolf: A Biography (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1968), p. 359.

  110. “unrestrained, merry”: Emil Kraepelin, Manic-Depressive Insanity and Paranoia (1921; New York: Arno Press, 1976), p. 63.

  111. “they show off in public”: Aretaeus of Cappadocia, quoted in G. Roccatagliata, A History of Ancient Psychiatry (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), pp. 230–31.

  112. mood and energy generally soar: A review of 14 clinical studies comprising a total of nearly 800 manic patients found that 71 percent exhibited euphoria (a similar percentage showed irritability and/or depression; many had symptoms of both depressed mood and euphoria): Goodwin and Jamison, Manic-Depressive Illness, p. 31. As early as Aretaeus of Cappadocia in A.D. 150, observers of mania and depression observed a close link between the two states, often regarding them as different forms of the same clinical condition.

  113. “like a man with air balloons”: Benjamin Haydon quoted in Walter Jackson Bate, John Keats (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1963), p. 98.

  114. more colorful language: N.J.C. Andreasen and B. Pfohl, “Linguistic Analysis of Speech in Affective Disorders,” Archives of General Psychiatry, 33: 1361–67 (1976).

  115. Rhyming and sound associations: Kraepelin refers to at least five earlier word-association experiments in his 1921 monograph Manic-Depressive Insanity; G. Murphy, “Types of Word-Association in Dementia Praecox, Manic-Depressives, and Normal Persons,” American Journal of Psychiatry, 79: 539–71 (1923); L. Pons, J. I. Nurnberger, and D. L. Murphy, “Mood-Independent Aberrancies in Associative Processes in Bipolar Affective Disorder: An Apparent Stabilizing Effect of Lithium,” Psychiatry Research, 14: 315–22 (1985).

  116. “There are moments”: Vincent van Gogh, letter to his brother Theo, February 3, 1889, in The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh (Boston: New York Graphic Society, published by Little, Brown, 1985), vol. 3, p. 134.

  117. Artwork produced during mania: The studies of artistic expression during mania and depression are summarized and reviewed in Goodwin and Jamison, Manic-Depressive Illness (tabul
arized on p. 288).

  118. “flight of ideas”: A review of nine clinical studies comprising a total of more than 600 manic patients found that 71 percent reported a flight of ideas or racing thoughts: ibid.

  119. “First and foremost”: John Custance, Wisdom, Madness, and Folly: The Philosophy of a Lunatic (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1952), p. 30.

  120. “As I sit here”: ibid., pp. 33–34.

  121. “All the problems of the universe”: E. Reiss, Konstitutionelle Verstimmung und Manisch-Depressives Irresein (Berlin: J. Springer, 1910); quoted in Goodwin and Jamison, Manic-Depressive Illness, pp. 26–27.

  122. “I roll on like a ball”: quoted in John Rosenberg, The Darkening Glass: A Portrait of Ruskin’s Genius (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 151.

  123. “bustle along like a Surinam toad”: quoted in W. Jackson Bate, Coleridge (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), p. 211.

  124. “mania is a sickness”: Robert Lowell, “A Conversation with Ian Hamilton,” in Robert Lowell: Collected Prose, ed. Robert Giroux (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1987), p.

  125. 126 “I must record everything”: Morag Coate, Beyond All Reason (London: Constable & Co., 1964), pp. 84–85.

  126. More than twenty studies: In addition to the more than twenty studies discussed in Kay Redfield Jamison, Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament (New York: Free Press, 1993), see F. Post, “Creativity and Psychopathology: A Study of 291 World-Famous Men,” British Journal of Psychiatry, 165: 22–34 (1994); J. J. Schildkraut, A. J. Hirshfeld, and J. M. Murphy, “Mind and Mood in Modern Art: II. Depressive Disorders, Spirituality, and Early Deaths in the Abstract Expressionist Artists of the New York School,” American Journal of Psychiatry, 151: 482–88 (1994); A. M. Ludwig, The Price of Greatness: Resolving the Creativity and Madness Controversy (New York: Guilford Press, 1995); F. Post, “Verbal Creativity, Depression, and Alcoholism: An Investigation of One Hundred American and British Writers,” British Journal of Psychiatry, 168: 545–55 (1996); E. M. Fodor, “Subclinical Inclination Toward Manic-Depression and Creative Performance on the Remote Associates Test,” Personality and Individual Differences, 27: 1273–83 (1999); D. Schuldberg, “Six Subclinical Spectrum Traits in Normal Creativity,” Creativity Research Journal, 13: 5–16 (2000–2001); C. M. Strong, C. M. Santosa, N. Sachs, C. M. Rennicke, P. W. Wang, A. Hier, and T. A. Ketter, “Relationships Between Creativity and Temperament in Bipolar Disorder Patients and Healthy Volunteers,” paper presented to the American Psychiatric Association in May 2000; B. Das, C. M. Strong, N. Sachs, M. Eng, J. Mongolcheep, and T. A. Ketter, “Creativity Enhancement in Bipolar Patients More Specific Than in Creative Subjects,” paper presented to the American Psychiatric Association in May 2001.

  127. “The thinking of the manic is flighty”: Eugen Bleuler, Textbook of Psychiatry, Eng. ed. A. A. Brill (New York: Macmillan, 1924), p. 466.

  128. Both individuals who are manic: N. Andreasen and P. Powers, “Creativity and Psychosis: An Examination of Conceptual Style,” Archives of General Psychiatry, 32: 70–73 (1975).

  129. researchers at the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic: L. Welch, O. Diethelm, and L. Long, “Measurement of Hyper-Associative Activity During Elation,” Journal of Psychology, 21: 113–26 (1946).

  130. Verbal associations increase: Pons, Nurnberger, and Murphy, “Mood-Independent Aberrancies”; M. R. Solovay, M. E. Shenton, and P. S. Holzman, “Comparative Studies of Thought Disorders: I. Mania and Schizophrenia,” Archives of General Psychiatry, 44: 13–20 (1987); J. Levine, K. Schild, R. Kimhi, and G. Schreiber, “Word Association Production in Affective Versus Schizophrenic Psychoses,” Psychopathology, 29: 7–13 (1996).

  131. study of eminent writers and artists: K. R. Jamison, “Mood Disorders and Patterns of Creativity in British Writers and Artists,” Psychiatry, 52: 125–34 (1989).

  132. Harvard study of manic-depression: R. L. Richards, D. K. Kinney, I. Lunde, and M. Bent, “Creativity in Manic-Depressives, Cyclothymes, and Their Normal First-Degree Relatives: A Preliminary Report,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 97: 281–88 (1988).

  133. students vulnerable to manic-depressive illness: Fodor, “Subclinical Inclination Toward Manic-Depression.”

  134. “The slightest forms of the disorder”: Kraepelin, Manic-Depressive Insanity, pp. 129–30.

  135. “a link in the long chain”: ibid., p. 130.

  136. certain temperaments, including hyperthymia: H. S. Akiskal and G. Mallya, “Criteria for the ‘Soft’ Bipolar Spectrum: Treatment Implications,” Psychopharmacology Bulletin, 23: 68–73 (1987); H. S. Akiskal, “Delineating Irritable and Hyperthymic Variants of the Cyclothymic Temperament,” Journal of Personality Disorders, 6: 326–42 (1992).

  137. Hypomanic Personality Scale: M. Eckblad and L. J. Chapman, “Development and Validation of a Scale for Hypomanic Personality,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 95: 214–22 (1986); T. D. Meyer, “The Hypomanic Personality Scale, the Big Five, and Their Relationship to Depression and Mania,” Personality and Individual Differences, 32: 649–60 (2002); T. D. Meyer and M. Hautzinger, “Screening for Bipolar Disorders Using the Hypomanic Personality Scale,” Journal of Affective Disorders, 75: 149–54 (2003).

  138. thirteen-year follow-up study of students: T. R. Kwapil, M. B. Miller, M. C. Zinser, L. J. Chapman, J. Chapman, and M. Eckblad, “A Longitudinal Study of High Scorers on the Hypomanic Personality Scale,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 109: 222–26 (2000).

  139. study of American and Italian students: G. F. Placidi, S. Signoretta, A. Liguori, R. Gervasi, I. Maremmani, and H. S. Akiskal, “The Semi-Structured Affective Temperament Interview (TEMPS-I): Reliability and Psychometric Properties in 1010 14–26-Year-Old Students,” Journal of Affective Disorders, 47: 1–10 (1998); Kagan, Galen’s Prophecy; Fox et al., “Continuity and Discontinuity.”

  Chapter 6: “Throwing Up Sky-Rockets”

  1. People like to be humbugged: P. T. Barnum, quoted in A. H. Saxon, P T Barnum: The Legend and the Man (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), p. 335.

  2. “throw up sky-rockets”: quoted ibid.

  3. “blessed with a vigor”: P. T. Barnum, Barnum’s Own Story: The Autobiography of P. T. Barnum (1855; Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1972), p. 452.

  4. “utterly fruitless”: ibid., p. 401.

  5. “We can hear it”: Leon Edel, “The Madness of Art,” American Journal of Psychiatry, 132: 1005–12 (1975), p. 1008.

  6. “The colors of my life”: “The Colors of My Life,” lyrics by Michael Stewart, from the musical Barnum by Michael Stewart and Cy Coleman, first performed in 1980; Warner Brothers, 1980.

  7. “I have lived so long”: P. T. Barnum, letter to Mrs. Abel C. Thomas, May 22, 1874, in Selected Letters of P. T. Barnum, ed. A. H. Saxon (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), p. 180.

  8. “Through a night as dark as space”: “The Prince of Humbug,” lyrics by Michael Stewart, from the musical Barnum by Michael Stewart and Cy Coleman; Warner Brothers 1980.

  9. Malcolm Gladwell argues: Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point (Boston: Little, Brown, 2000.)

  10. “How I long for”: John Osborne, Look Back in Anger: A Play in Three Acts (London: Faber and Faber, 1960), p. 15.

  11. “Good things as well as bad”: C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1952; New York: HarperCollins, 2001), p. 176.

  12. “he had fun”: Katharine Graham, obituary for Russ Wiggins, Washington Post, November 20, 2000.

  13. “powerful senders”: R. Buck, R. E. Miller, and W. F. Caul, “Sex, Personality and Physiological Variables in the Communication of Emotion via Facial Expression,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 30: 587–96 (1974).

  14. scored high on measures of extraversion: ibid.; H. S. Friedman and R. E. Riggio, “Effect of Individual Differences in Nonverbal Expressiveness on Transmission of Emotion,” Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 6: 96–101 (1981); Elaine Hatfield, John Cacioppo, and Richard Rapson, Emotional Co
ntagion (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

  15. “visible and convincing appearance”: Carl Jung, Psychological Types (London: Kegan Paul, 1933), p. 407.

  16. “kindles no flame of enthusiasm”: ibid., p. 408.

  17. The Affective Communication Test: H. S. Friedman, L. M. Prince, R. E. Riggio, and M. R. Di Matteo, “Understanding and Assessing Nonverbal Expressiveness: The Affective Communication Test,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39: 333–51 (1980).

  18. People who score high on this test: ibid.

  19. Expressive individuals strongly influence: Friedman and Riggio, “Effect of Individual Differences”; E. S. Sullins, “Emotional Contagion Revisited: Effects of Social Comparisons and Expressive Style on Mood Convergence,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 17: 166–74 (1991).

  20. more emotional information: D. Newton, “Attribution and the Unit of Perception of Ongoing Behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 28: 28–38 (1973); R. Buck, R. Baron, N. Goodman, and B. Shapiro, “Utilization of Spontaneous Nonverbal Behavior in the Study of Emotion Communication,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39: 522–29 (1980); L. Z. McArthur, “What Grabs You? The Role of Attention in Impression Formation and Causal Attribution,” in Social Cognition, ed. E. T. Higgins, C. P. Herman, and M. P. Zanna (Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1981), pp. 201–41; R. Buck, R. Baron, and D. Barrette, “Temporal Organization of Spontaneous Emotional Expression: A Segmentation Analysis,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42: 506–17 (1982).

  21. Women, although they in general score: Friedman et al., “Understanding and Assessing Nonverbal Expressiveness”; R. Buck, The Communication of Emotion (New York: Guilford, 1984); Judith Hall, Nonverbal Sex Differences: Communication Accuracy and Expressive Style (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984).