In 1971, as a manic (and in-denial) Kay Redfield Jamison began her doctoral studies in psychology at UCLA, she sought to find a way to weather the increasingly unpredictable cycles of mania and depression which had plagued her throughout her undergraduate studies. Rather than seek the help of a psychiatrist, confide in a friend, family member, or colleague, or admit even to herself that she was in the throes of a terrifying illness, Kay used the money from her fellowship to buy herself a horse. The horse was stubborn, neurotic, and prone to lameness, and though Kay spent lots of money on the horse (as well as lots of time caring for it), she was ultimately forced to sell it, unable to keep up with its costs. The horse, then, is a symbol for Kay’s slow, painful journey toward escaping her denial about her manic-depressive illness—and her need for treatment. Though Kay’s selling of the horse did not coincide directly with her reaching out and seeking help, her failure to be able to care for the horse symbolizes her failure to be able to care for herself, and it compounds the story’s increasing sense of pressure as the Kay of the early 1970s descended further into madness.
Kay’s Horse Quotes in An Unquiet Mind
I decided early in graduate school that I needed to do something about my moods. It quickly came down to a choice between seeing a psychiatrist or buying a horse. Since almost everyone I knew was seeing a psychiatrist, and since I had an absolute belief that I should be able to handle my own problems, I naturally bought a horse. Not just any horse, but an unrelentingly stubborn and blindingly neurotic one, a sort of equine Woody Allen, but without the entertainment value.
The complexities of what we are given in life are vast and beyond comprehension. It was as if my father had given me, by way of temperament, an impossibly wild, dark, and unbroken horse. It was a horse without a name, and a horse with no experience of a bit between its teeth.
Kay’s Horse Symbol Timeline in An Unquiet Mind
