Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in An Unquiet Mind, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Madness
Love as Medicine
Stigma and Society
Authenticity in the Professional World
Summary
Analysis
In a brief epilogue, Kay Redfield Jamison considers the question of whether she would—if given the chance—choose to live her life without manic-depressive illness. She has ultimately decided that if lithium were not available, the answer would be no—but because it is, she says she would choose to have the illness, strange as that answer may seem. Though depression is awful, tiresome, and isolating, she believes that the dual nature of her illness has allowed her to feel “more things, more deeply.” She has learned about loyalty, caring, and transparency, and has come to understand both the fragility and the resilience of her own spirit. Her illness, for all it has put her through, has allowed her to find “new corners” in her mind and heart all the time—some have been “grotesque,” but others have given her “limitless views.”
In the memoir’s epilogue, Kay Redfield Jamison lays out one of its most complex questions—whether she would, if given the choice, choose the trials and tribulations of a life with manic-depressive illness over a “normal” existence. Jamison ultimately concludes that though her illness has, without a doubt, taken from her at times in her life, it has also given her strange but immeasurable gifts. Jamison wants to complicate the idea of mental illness as strictly a burden and ease the stigma against sufferers of mental illnesses and mood disorders.
Themes
