Touched With Fire and over 360,000 other books are available for Amazon Kindle – Amazon’s new wireless reading device. Learn more

 

or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
 
 
Express Checkout with PayPhrase
What's this? | Create PayPhrase
Sorry!
More Buying Choices
194 used & new from $1.93

Have one to sell? Sell yours here
 
   
Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament
 
 
Start reading Touched With Fire on your Kindle in under a minute.

Don’t have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here.
 
  

Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament (Paperback)

~ (Author) "We of the craft are all crazy," remarked Lord Byron about himself and his fellow poets..." (more)
Key Phrases: these high mortal miseries, recurrent melancholia, significant mood disorder, Lord Byron, Robert Lowell, George Gordon (more...)
3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (59 customer reviews)

List Price: $16.00
Price: $10.88 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details
You Save: $5.12 (32%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.

Want it delivered Thursday, November 12? Choose One-Day Shipping at checkout. Details
56 new from $4.40 137 used from $1.93 1 collectible from $10.00

Formats

Amazon Price New from Used from
  Kindle Edition $9.59 -- --
  Hardcover -- $27.06 $3.85
  Paperback $10.88 $4.40 $1.93

Frequently Bought Together

Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament + An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness + Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide
Price For All Three: $31.22

Show availability and shipping details

  • This item: Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament by Kay Redfield Jamison

    In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
    Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details

  • An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness by Kay Redfield Jamison

    In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
    Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details

  • Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide by Kay Redfield Jamison

    In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
    Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details


Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Exuberance: The Passion for Life

Exuberance: The Passion for Life

by Kay Redfield Jamison
4.2 out of 5 stars (24)  $10.85
Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide

Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide

by Kay Redfield Jamison
4.4 out of 5 stars (79)  $10.17
Brilliant Madness: Living with Manic Depressive Illness

Brilliant Madness: Living with Manic Depressive Illness

by Patty Duke
4.7 out of 5 stars (43)  $7.99
Nothing Was the Same

Nothing Was the Same

by Kay Redfield Jamison
4.4 out of 5 stars (14)  $16.50
Manic-Depressive Illness: Bipolar Disorders and Recurrent Depression, 2nd Edition

Manic-Depressive Illness: Bipolar Disorders and Recurrent Depression, 2nd Edition

by Frederick K. Goodwin
4.9 out of 5 stars (23)  $64.89
Explore similar items

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The march of science in explaining human nature continues. In Touched With Fire, Jamison marshals a tremendous amount of evidence for the proposition that most artistic geniuses were (and are) manic depressives. This is a book of interest to scientists, psychologists, and artists struggling with the age-old question of whether psychological suffering is an essential component of artistic creativity. Anyone reading this book closely will be forced to conclude that it is. Very Highly Recommended. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.


From Publishers Weekly

Drawing from the lives of artists such as Van Gogh, Byron and Virginia Woolf, Jamison examines the links between manic-depression and creativity.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 384 pages
  • Publisher: Free Press (October 18, 1996)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 068483183X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0684831831
  • Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (59 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #12,323 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

    #7 in  Books > Health, Mind & Body > Mental Health > Manic Depression
    #17 in  Books > Science > Behavioral Sciences > Behavioral Psychology
    #20 in  Books > Nonfiction > Current Events > Poverty > Social Services & Welfare

More About the Author

Kay Redfield Jamison
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Visit Amazon's Kay Redfield Jamison Page

Inside This Book (learn more)




What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament
58% buy the item featured on this page:
Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament 3.8 out of 5 stars (59)
$10.88
An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
26% buy
An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness 4.3 out of 5 stars (352)
$10.17
Nothing Was the Same
7% buy
Nothing Was the Same 4.4 out of 5 stars (14)
$16.50
Exuberance: The Passion for Life
4% buy
Exuberance: The Passion for Life 4.2 out of 5 stars (24)
$10.85

Tags Customers Associate with This Product

 (What's this?)
Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
 

Your tags: Add your first tag
 

 

Customer Reviews

59 Reviews
5 star:
 (28)
4 star:
 (14)
3 star:
 (5)
2 star:
 (4)
1 star:
 (8)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.8 out of 5 stars (59 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
198 of 215 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding analysis of tie between bipolar & creativity, July 12, 2002
By K. L Sadler (Freedom, Pa. USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)      
Ok...let's get some things straight right off the bat. This book by Jamison is NOT a book meant for the easy reading of those who are trying to find out more about bipolar disease (whether or not they are merely curious or actually have been diagnosed with it themselves!). This book is an excellent qualitative case studies argument for professionals and peers (in education, in psychology, in neuroscience, in the art world, etc.) who would like to further delve into the long-circulated theory that those blessed with creative abilities are often cursed with manic-depressive (bipolar disorder). Those lay people who merely want confirmation of their illness (or that of a family member) are going to be in for an incredible disappointment if they 'get' this book. It was never intended to be a self-help diary, no matter what Jamison's previous books on bipolar have been like.

Next...Jamison makes an excellent case for the link between bipolar disorder and creativity. The methodology she uses tends to be dependent upon case studies of particular artists and the information available from their own writings as well as their family backgrounds and family lineage. It is a well-known fact that many of the psychiatric disorders have both a genetic and an environmental component. Jamison obviously is learned enough and has enough background in neuroscience and psychiatry, to be able to tie the information often gleaned separately in these fields, together in a more comprehensive whole. No, Jamison does not prove beyond a shadow of a doubt the concept that many writers/artists are plagued by bipolararity...but she sure makes a heck of a case for the previously surmised existence of a link! Her science information is impeccable, given what is known now at this particular time concerning manic-depression and the brain. In spite of having to use historical accounts and letters of family members, the artists themselves, and those in direct contact with these people...Jamison's analysis of their work and art, in conjunction with that historical writing, and using what is known now about this particular disorder in the brain is an phenomenal act of intelligent and scholarly writing. And it is well-written and not typical-boring textbook (or 'let's-slap-ourselves-on-the-back-in-congratulatory' professorial type) either! That's high praise on my part, since I cannot abide professors who pander their own writing (whether textbooks or journals) or write to their colleagues in as hard-to-understand professional jargon as possible, and then demand their poor students attempt to make sense of it (as well as line the professors pockets!) Cynical, aren't I?

I had seen and heard of Jamison's work before, but this was the first opportunity I had had to pick up one of her books. Since having not only two artistic grandfathers (one of whom fit the mold of those in this book) as well as having a good per cent of my own family history done (and being linked to some very famous depressives and manic depressives on both sides like Mary Todd Lincoln)...my interest has always been piqued by this theory. My first three years in college gave me a great background in British and American literature, and I remember reading William Blake and thinking 'this guy straddles the world between being one of the major prophetic poets, and being stark-raving loonie'!
Jamison really confirmed what I had previously thought by giving more background into the lives of these men and women. Plus she ties in the what is known about their placement into insane asylums and into their deaths at their own hands (as well as dependence upon alcohol or other drugs to relieve their depression...they rarely wanted to ease their mania which in itself is another confirmation of their own recognizance of their problems).

Jamison watches the speculation, that I find abhorent in historical research. She makes no claims that this is the final word on these people...she cannot. She knows and admits this. But her immense work in this area provides significant input into the lives and works of these men. It makes all of us, whether in the medical world, the educational world, or the artistic world appreciate the art and writings of these men even more because of the knowledge of what they went through.

Karen L. Sadler,
Science Education,
University of Pittsburgh

Comment Comment (1) | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
69 of 72 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars This book changed my life and made me realize I'M NOT CRAZY!, August 28, 1999
By A Customer
Touched With Fire is by far the most life changing book I have ever read. Having suffered with Cyclothymia as long as I can remember, and also being an extremely creative person, I thought I was losing my mind...then I read this book. Kay Jamison explores the relationship between creativity and manic depressive illness in an amazing way. The excerpts of letters, etc., of great artists, writers and composers of the past are enlightening, inspiring, and devastating to read. They open up a new understanding of these individuals and what they lived with. This is a must read not only for those suffering from forms of manic depressive illness, but also those who are associated with them. Wonderful reading. INFORMATIVE, ENLIGHTENING, AND AMAZING.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
43 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Who Are You To Claim You're Normal?, November 6, 2000
By Gordon Hilgers (Dallas, Texas, USA) - See all my reviews
It's long been considered a fact of life that seems to go with the territory that creative people are not only "abnormal" or "outside the mainstream"--but that many of them are just plain loopy. Doubtless, some of that kind of thinking owes a big debt to the narrowing--and often stereotypical--definitions of "normal" in American society. However, the gradual merging of biology and psychology over the last two decades shows a scientifically verifiable correlation between the "artistic temperament" and "manic-depressive illness."

Want to know more about what psychological researchers have been discovering about this long-acknowledged link since the Prozac Revolution? Kay Redfield Jamison, a psychologist at Johns Hopkins, presents as "evidence" a series of recent statistical studies of creative men and women that reveal a definite relationship between the long-ellusive and hard-to-diagnose illness and the personality traits researchers suspect are inherent in successful creative activity. While that's not anything particularly new or groundbreaking--the dry opening chapters are perhaps a little too technical for the information Jamison seeks to convey to a general audience--"Touched With Fire" may help to dispel some of the confusion among "normal" family members and friends who are often too quick to label the artists and writers among them as "messed up" or "weird" or "skitzy."

Once Jamison gets down to the brass tacks and begins to present details from specific cases--Byron, Van Gogh, Melville and Woolf--the book presents a fascinating gathering of poems, notes, letters and testimonies that could shatter the idea that history's most creative people were also exceptionally well-behaved and mannerly. The fact they weren't is testimony, of course, to art's ability to sculpt an illusion around its creator, but the revelation does more than that. After all, still-murky distinctions between the artistic temperament and insanity bring up ethical questions regarding the ultimate meaning and direction of normality in America--who is to be included in the "Pantheon of the Normal" and who is to be barred at the door--but Jamison merely glosses over this area. Since social morays often change the meaning of "normality" over time--and since what we consider "normal" today was by no means "normal" 200 years ago--studies of this relationship that limit themselves to diagnostic criteria and subjective symptoms are bound to be far too limited to provide even the most superficial understanding of how creativity interacts with madness and other discomfiting developments.

One of the book's quirks is that Jamison--doubtless due to scant information--limits the subject's medicinal applications to the effects of lithium on creativity and creative individuals with bipolar illness. What she doesn't tell her readers is that the discovery of Prozac and other SSRIs has advented a new age in the treatment and understanding of all forms of depression. In fact, depression seems to have distinct components in many cases that psychologists never understood until the unintended effects of Prozac revealed them. Prozac has been found to have a positive effect on obsessive/compulsive behavior, Tourette's Syndrome and even in cases that had previously been misdiagnosed as schizophrenia. Depression has been found to cut a far wider swath through the psyche than researchers have previously acknowledged--even to themselves.

Furthermore, Jamison completely omits--perhaps due to a dearth of research--possible linkages between the creative activities of writers and artists that may someday be found to precipitate mania and depression. Writing and art supposedly clear the mind. What happens to the artist, poet or writer who inadvertantly clears--or, to put it into the technical vernacular, "kindles"--the mind a little too much? How do the stresses of the craft mitigate the illnesses we associate with creator/victims? How does the impression of a powerful stimuli--a trauma, drug or alchol use, or the "high" of creating a powerful poem or painting--set up patterns in psychic response and in the process of how we relate to less-powerful stimuli? Needless to say, we've got a long way to go before we completely understand manic-depressive illness and its strange tendency to appear in the psyches of creative individuals. Jamison's book might be entertaining and comforting to those of us who have to live with the disease--even if parts of it parse like a research paper--but we're only scratching the surface of something that deserves much more in-depth investigation than we've undertaken.

Comment Comment (1) | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)


Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars Pissed off customer pays for book but never receives it!
I encourage customers to STOP BUYING FROM "tjbianch". This is my second time ordering from one of the "used" booksellers on the Amazon website where I paid for an item that I... Read more
Published 1 month ago by silkybrown

4.0 out of 5 stars A valuable guide to secrets of artistic creativity
I encountered "Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament" whilst studying personality theory at RMIT. Read more
Published 2 months ago by mianfei

4.0 out of 5 stars A bit glorifying - but good
For those of us who are both into art and "touched with fire," this is of course an interesting book. Read more
Published 4 months ago by S. Kjaersdalen

1.0 out of 5 stars way way too much
This book was too hard to follow. The author assumes that the reader (me) understands or has a dictionary is hand at all times. Which of course I did not.
Published 17 months ago by Leslie Guelker

5.0 out of 5 stars Creativity and Fire
HOw much of the creativity of fiery individuals is due to mood disorders? This book explores the connection of many who have been artistic and successful with mood disorder. Read more
Published on April 22, 2007 by Nancy J. Sogliuzzo

4.0 out of 5 stars Not the whole story...but a fine effort all the same
As mentioned by others, if you are looking for the actual process of how depression is seen to predispose certain people to be creative then this book is not for you. Read more
Published on November 5, 2006 by Brian Asquith

5.0 out of 5 stars Mens sana in corpore sano.
Over the years.....for as long as I can remember - I sit alone and let my mind soar to the most incredible heights. My mind hears, sees and feels .... Read more
Published on October 10, 2006 by James F. Cote

4.0 out of 5 stars Still Worth A Read
While Prof. Jamison's previous writing has inspired me and also given me insight to the potential pitfalls that face someone with bipolar disorder, I found this book to be a bit... Read more
Published on July 14, 2006 by E. Glass

5.0 out of 5 stars Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament
It is a very beotifull book, with an almost poetical writing abaut the relation between the manic-Depressive illness and art creativity. Read more
Published on June 30, 2006 by G. Leao

5.0 out of 5 stars inspiring
After finishing my senior independent study on creativity and mental illness, I still go back to this book in with fond memories. Read more
Published on May 3, 2006 by KS

Only search this product's reviews



Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
Search all Amazon discussions
   




Product Information from the Amapedia Community

Beta (What's this?)


Look for Similar Items by Category


Look for Similar Items by Subject

 

Feedback

If you need help or have a question for Customer Service, contact us.
 Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
Is there any other feedback you would like to provide?

Your comments can help make our site better for everyone.


Your Recent History

 (What's this?)

After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.