Night Falls Fast

by Kay Redfield Jamison

  39 the same cognitive and social: M. Hammer and J. Zubin, “Evolution, Culture, and Psychopathology,” Journal of General Psychology, 78 (1968): 151–164; D. F. Horrobin, A. Ally, R. A. Karmali, M. Karmazyn, M. S. Manka, and R. O. Morgan, “Prostaglandins and Schizophrenia: Further Discussion of the Evidence,” Psychological Bulletin, 8 (1978): 43–48; L. Sloman, M. Konstantareas, and D. W. Dunham, “The Adaptive Role of Maladaptive Neurosis,” Biological Psychiatry, 14 (1979): 961–972; J. S. Price and L. Sloman, “The Evolutionary Model of Psychiatric Disorder,” Archives of General Psychiatry, 41 (1984): 211; S. Vinogradov, I. Gottesman, H. Molses, and S. Nicol, “Negative Association Between Schizophrenia and Rheumatoid Arthritis,” Schizophrenia Bulletin, 17 (1991): 669–678; D. B. Horrobin, “Schizophrenia: The Illness That Made Us Human,” Medical Hypotheses, 50 (1998): 269–288; R. J. Wyatt, “Schizophrenia: Closing the Gap Between Genetics, Epidemiology, and Prevention,” in E. Susser, A. Brown, and J. Gorman, eds., Epigenetic Causes of Schizophrenia (Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association Press, 1999), pp. 241–261.

  40 Timothy Crow: T. J. Crow, “Temporal Lobe Asymmetries as the Key to the Etiology of Schizophrenia,” Schizophrenia Bulletin, 16 (1990): 433–443; T. J. Crow, “Constraints on Concepts of Pathogenesis: Language and the Speciation Process as the Key to the Etiology of Schizophrenia,” Archives of General Psychiatry, 52 (1995): 1011–1014; T. J. Crow, “A Darwinian Approach to the Origins of Psychosis,” British Journal of Psychiatry, 167 (1995): 12–25; T. J. Crow, “Is Schizophrenia the Price That Homo sapiens Pays for Language?” Schizophrenia Research, 28 (1997): 127–141.

  41 Depression, characterized as it is: J. Price, L. Sloman, R. J. Gardner, P. Gilbert, and P. Rohde, “The Social Competition Hypothesis of Depression,” British Journal of Psychiatry, 164 (1994): 309–315; I. H. Jones, D. M. Stoddart, and J. Mallick, “Towards a Sociobiological Model of Depression: A Marsupial Model,” British Journal of Psychiatry, 166 (1995): 475–479; J. H. G. Williams, “Using Behavioural Ecology to Understand Depression,” British Journal of Psychiatry, 173 (1998): 453–454.

  42 Less dominant animals: P. Gilbert, Depression: The Evolution of Powerlessness (New York: Guilford Press, 1992); J. S. Price, L. Sloman, R. Gardner, P. Gilbert, and P. Rohde, “The Social Competition Hypothesis of Depression,” British Journal of Psychiatry, 164 (1994): 309.

  43 “[Icarus] glances up”: A. Sexton, “To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Triumph,” in The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981), p. 53.

  44 uncommonly creative: R. A. Woodruff, L. N. Robins, G. Winokur, and T. Reich, “Manic-Depressive Illness and Social Achievement,” Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 47 (1971): 237–249; C. Bagley, “Occupational Class and Symptoms of Depression,” Social Sciences and Medicine, 7 (1973): 327–340; F. K. Goodwin and K. R. Jamison, Manic-Depressive Illness (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 169–173; W. Coryell, J. Endicott, M. Keller, N. Andreasen, W. Groove, R. M. A. Hirschfeld, and W. Scheftner, “Bipolar Affective Disorder and High Achievement: A Familial Association,” American Journal of Psychiatry, 146 (1989): 983–988. Anthropologist and physician Melvin Konner has also addressed this issue in Why the Reckless Survive … and Other Secrets of Nature (New York: Viking, 1990).

  45 At least twenty studies: A partial listing of the studies or related discussions include C. Martindale, “Father’s Absence, Psychopathology, and Poetic Eminence,” Psychological Reports, 31 (1972): 843–847; A. Storr, The Dynamics of Creation (London: Secker & Warburg, 1972); W. H. Trethowan, “Music and Mental Disorder,” in M. Critchley and R. E. Henson, eds., Music and the Brain (London: Heinemann, 1977), pp. 398–442; R. Richards, “Relationships Between Creativity and Psychopathology: An Evaluation and Interpretation of the Evidence,” Genetic Psychology Monographs, 103 (1981): 261–324; N. C. Andreasen, “Creativity and Mental Illness: Prevalence Rates in Writers and Their First-Degree Relatives,” American Journal of Psychiatry, 144 (1987): 1288–1292; R. L. Richards, D. K. Kinney, I. Lunde, and M. Benet, “Creativity in Manic-Depressives, Cyclothymes, and Their Normal First-Degree Relatives: A Preliminary Report,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 97 (1988): 281–288; K. R. Jamison, “Mood Disorders and Patterns of Creativity in British Writers and Artists,” Psychiatry, 52 (1989): 125–134; K. R. Jamison, Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament (New York: Free Press, 1993); F. Post, “Creativity and Psychopathology: A Study of 291 World-Famous Men,” British Journal of Psychiatry, 165 (1994): 22–34; 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 (1994): 482–488; 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 (1996): 545–555.

  46 “But mark how beautiful an order”: Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defence of Poetry, in R. Ingpen and W. E. Peck, eds., The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, vol. 7 (New York: Gordian Press, 1965), p. 126.

  47 “Is the shipwrack then a harvest”: Gerard Manley Hopkins, “The Wreck of the Deutschland,” ll. 248–249 in N. H. MacKenzie, ed., The Poetical Work of Gerard Manley Hopkins (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 127.

  48 “It isn’t possible”: Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, 1888 (undated), in The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh, vol. 2 (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1958), p. 542.

  49 The source of the data on natural scientists, business leaders, theater people, (international) writers, and international poets is A. Ludwig, The Price of Greatness (New York: Guilford Press, 1995); for composers, W. H. Trethowan, “Music and Mental Disorder,” in M. Critchley and R. E. Henson, eds., Music and the Brain (London: Heinemann, 1977), pp. 398–442; for American poets, unpublished study of Pulitzer Prize winners by K. R. Jamison, 1999; for British poets, K. R. Jamison, Touched with Fire (New York: Free Press, 1993); for Japanese writers, Mamoru Iga, The Thorn in the Chrysanthemum: Suicide and Economic Success in Modern Japan (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986); for American artists (Abstract Expressionists): 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 (1994): 482–488.

  50 Many of these artists, writers, and scientists: A partial list of writers who committed suicide includes Francis Ellingwood Abbott, Ryuunosuke Akutagawa, Takeo Arishima, James Robert Baker, Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Walter Benjamin, John Berryman, Charles Blount, Barcroft Boake, Tadeusz Borowski, Richard Brautigan, William Clark Brinkley, Charles Buckmaster, Eustace Budgell, Don Carpenter, Paul Celan, Thomas Chatterton, Charles Caleb Colton, Hart Crane, Thomas Creech, John Davidson, Osamu Dazai, Tove Ditlevsen, Michael Dorris, Stephen Duck, Sergey Esenin, Aleksander Fadeyev, John Gould Fletcher, Romain Gary, Adam Lindsay Gordon, Richard Harris, Thomas Heggen, James Leo Herlihy, Ernest Hemingway, Ashihei Hino, Robin Hyde, William Inge, Shungetsu Ikuta, B. S. Johnson, Michioi Katō, Yasunari Kawabata, Bisan Kawakami, Tōkoku Kitamura, Heinrich von Kleist, Arthur Koestler, Jerzy Kosinski, Letitia E. Landon, Primo Levi, Vachel Lindsay, Ross Lockridge Jr., Anthony Lukas, Philipp Mainländer, F. O. Matthiessen, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Charlotte Mew, Hugh Miller, Walter M. Miller Jr., Yukio Mishima, Yves Navarre, Gérard de Nerval, Arthur Nortje, John O’Brien, Cesare Pavese, Sylvia Plath, QuYuan, Ferdinand Raimund, Jacques Rigaut, Anne Sexton, Sir John Suckling, Eikō Tanaka, Robert Tannahill, Sara Teasdale, Frank Tilsley, John Kennedy Toole, George Trakl, Marina Tsvetayeva, Frances Vernon, Anna Wickham, Virginia Woolf, Constance Fenimore Woolson, Paolo Yashvili, and Stefan Zweig. There is suggestive evidence of suicide in the deaths of Robert Burton, Eugene Izzi, Randall Jarrell, and Jack London. A partial
list of artists who committed suicide includes Ralph Barton, James Carroll Beckwith, Francesco Borromini, Patrick Henry Bruce, Dora Carrington, John Currie, Edward Dayes, Rosso Fiorentino (probably), Richard Gerstl, Mark Gertler, Vincent van Gogh, Arshile Gorky, Benjamin Haydon, William Morris Hunt, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, François Le Moyne, Alfred Maurer, Jules Pascin, Eric Pauelson (Poulsen), Mark Rothko, Jean-Louis Sauce, Jochem Seidel, Nicolas de Staël, Pietro Testa, Henry Tilson, William Walton, Brett Whitely, Johannes Wiedewelt, Ezra Winter, Emanuel de Witte, and Jacob de Wolf. (The suicides of several early painters are discussed by Rudolf and Margot Wittkower in their book Born Under Saturn [New York: W. W. Norton, 1963].) Many others, who did not die from suicide, attempted it: among them are writers Anna Akhmatova, A. Alvarez, James Baldwin, Konstanin Batyushkov, Charles Baudelaire, Hayden Carruth, Joseph Conrad, William Cowper, Isak Dinesen, Afansy Fet, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gustav Fröding, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Maxim Gorky, Graham Greene, Nikolai Gumilyov, Ivor Gurney, Herman Hesse, J. M. R. Lenz, Osip Mandelstam, Eugene O’Neill, Dorothy Parker, Edgar Allan Poe, Laura Riding, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Francis Thompson, Evelyn Waugh, and Mary Wollstonecraft, and artists Paul Gauguin, George Innes, Frida Kahlo, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. A number of eminent scientists, mathematicians, and inventors have also committed suicide, including Ludwig Boltzmann, founder of statistical mechanics; Paul Ehrenfest, theoretical physicist; Alan Turing, mathematician and pioneer in computer theory; Emil Fischer, Nobel laureate in chemistry who did fundamental research on sugars and purines, and synthesized caffeine and barbiturates; Paul Kammerer, experimental biologist and author of The Transformation of Species; Robert Fitzroy, captain of HMS Beagle, hydrographer, and meteorologist; Wallace Carothers, inventor of nylon and coinventor of synthetic rubber; Meriwether Lewis, explorer; and Yataka Taniyama, mathematician. Mathematicians G. H. Hardy and Srinivasa Aaiyanger Remanujan attempted suicide.

  51 “The hand that whirls the water”: D. Thomas, “The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower,” ll. 11–13, in The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas (New York: New Directions, 1957).

  7 • DEATH-BLOOD

  1 “I have a violence in me”: Sylvia Plath, journal entry, June 11, 1958. American poet Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) wrote extensively about her black, violent moods in her letters, journals, poems, and autobiographical novel The Bell Jar. When she was twenty years old, Plath made a nearly lethal suicide attempt; ten years later she killed herself with carbon monoxide. The poems she wrote just before her death were, said Robert Lowell, “the autobiography of a fever.”

  2 Reserpine: J. M. Davis, “Central Biogenic Amines and Theories of Depression and Mania,” in W. F. Fann, I. Karacan, A. D. Pokorny, and R. L. Williams, eds., Phenomenology and Treatment of Depression (New York: Spectrum, 1977).

  3 iproniazid: N. S. Kline, “Clinical Experience with Iproniazid (Marsilid),” Journal of Clinical Experimental Psychopathology 19 (Suppl. 1) (1962).

  4 Rats with low serotonin levels: L. Valzelli, S. Bernasconi, and M. Dalessandro, “Effect of Tryptophan Administration on Spontaneous and P-CPA-Induced Muricidal Aggression in Laboratory Rats,” Pharmacological Research Communications, 13 (1981): 891–897.

  5 “knockout” mice: D. Brunner and R. Hen, “Insights into the Neurobiology of Impulsive Behavior from Serotonin Receptor Knockout Mice,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 836 (1997): 81–105.

  6 Rats and other animals: N. K. Popova, A. V. Kulikov, E.M. Nikulina, E. Y. Kozlachkova, and G. B. Maslova, “Serotonin Metabolism and Serotonergic Receptors in Norway Rats Selected for Low Aggressiveness Towards Man,” Aggressive Behavior, 17 (1991): 207–213.

  7 Monkeys with low levels: P. T. Mehlman, J. D. Higley, I. Faucher, A. A. Lilly, D. M. Taub, J. Vickers, S. J. Suomi, and M. Linnoila, “Low CSF 5-HIAA Concentrations and Severe Aggression and Impaired Impulse Control in Nonhuman Primates,” American Journal of Psychiatry, 151 (1994): 1485–1491.

  8 If serotonin levels: B. Chamberlain, F. R. Ervin, R. O. Pihl, and S. N. Young, “The Effect of Raising or Lowering Tryptophan Levels on Aggression in Vervet Monkeys,” Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior, 28 (1987): 503–510; K. A. Miczek and P. Donat, “Brain 5-HT System and Inhibition of Aggressive Behavior,” in T. Archer, P. Bevan, and A. Cools, eds., Behavioral Pharmacology of 5-HT (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1990), pp. 117–144; P. T. Mehlman, J. D. Higley, I. Faucher, A. A. Lilly, D. M. Taub, S. Suomi, and M. Linnoila, “Low CSF 5-HIAA Concentrations and Severe Aggression and Impaired Impulse Control in Nonhuman Primates,” American Journal of Psychiatry, 151 (1994): 1485–1491.

  9 forty-nine free-ranging rhesus monkeys: J. D. Higley, P. T. Mehlman, S. B. Higley, B. Fernald, J. Vickers, S. G. Lindell, D. M. Taub, S. J. Suomi, and M. Linnoila, “Excessive Mortality in Young Free-Ranging Male Nonhuman Primates with Low Cerebrospinal Fluid 5-Hydroxyindoleacetic Acid Concentrations,” Archives of General Psychiatry, 53 (1996): 537–543.

  10 who share with other: B. Eichelman, “Aggressive Behavior: From Laboratory to Clinic,” Archives of General Psychiatry, 49 (1992): 488–492; M. Åsberg, “Monoamine Neurotransmitters in Human Aggressiveness and Violence: A Selective Review,” Criminal Behavior and Mental Health, 4 (1994): 303–327.

  11 nonhuman primates and humans: For an excellent review, see J. D. Higley and M. Linnoila, “Low Central Nervous System Serotonergic Activity Is Traitlike and Correlates with Impulsive Behavior: A Nonhuman Primate Model Investigating Genetic and Environmental Influences on Neurotransmission,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 836 (1997): 39–56.

  12 low CSF 5-HIAA concentrations: Ibid.

  13 Primates with low CSF 5-HIAA: P. T. Mehlman, J. D. Higley, I. Faucher, A. A. Lilly, D. M. Taub, J. Vickers, S. J. Suomi, and M. Linnoila, “Correlation of CSF 5-HIAA Concentration with Sociality and the Timing of Emigration in Free-Ranging Primates,” American Journal of Psychiatry, 152 (1995): 907–913; J. D. Higley, S. T. King, M. F. Hasert, M. Champoux, S. J. Suomi, and M. Linnoila, “Stability of Interindividual Differences in Serotonin Function and Its Relationship to Aggressive Wounding and Competent Social Behavior in Rhesus Macaque Females,” Neuropsychopharmacology, 14 (1996): 67–76; P. T. Mehlman, J. D. Highley, B. J. Fernald, F. R. Sallee, S. J. Suomi, and M. Linnoila, “CSF 5-HIAA, Testosterone, and Sociosexual Behaviors in Free-Ranging Male Rhesus Macaques in the Mating Season,” Psychiatry Research, 72 (1997): 89–102.

  14 Genes certainly are important: D. Nielsen, D. Goldman, M. Virkkunen, R. Tukola, R. Rawlings, and M. Linnoila, “Suicidality and 5-Hydroxindoleacetic Acid Concentration Associated with a Tryptophan Hydroxylase Polymorphism,” Archives of General Psychiatry, 51 (1994): 34–38; E. F. Coccaro, C. S. Bergeman, R. J. Kavoussi, and A. D. Seroczynski, “Heritability of Aggression and Irritability: A Twin Study of the Buss-Durkee Aggression Scales in Adult Male Subjects,” Biological Psychiatry, 41 (1997): 273–284; J. J. Mann, K. M. Malone, D. A. Nielsen, D. Goldman, J. Erdos, and J. Gelernter, “Possible Association of a Polymorphism of the Tryptophan Hydroxylase Gene with Suicidal Behavior in Depressed Patients,” American Journal of Psychiatry, 154 (1997): 1451–1453; F. Bellivier, M. Leboyer, P. Courtet, C. Buresi, B. Beaufils, D. Samolyk, J.-F. Allilaire, J. Feingold, J. Mallet, and A. Malafosse, “Association Between the Tryptophan Hydroxylase Gene and Manic-Depressive Illness,” Archives of General Psychiatry, 55 (1998): 33–37; P. Courtet, C. Buresi, M. Abbar, J. P. Boulenger, D. Castelnau, and A. Malafosse, “Association Between the Tryptophan Hydroxylase Gene and Suicidal Behavior,” poster presented at the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology Annual Meeting, San Juan, Puerto Rico, December 1998; D. A. Nielsen, M. Virkkunen, J. Lappalainen, M. Eggert, G. L. Brown, J. C. Long, D. Goldman, and M. Linnoila, “A Tryptophan Hydroxylase Gene Marker for Suicidality and Alcoholism,” Archives of General Psychiatry, 55 (1998): 593–602.

  15 Adult male vervet monkeys: M. J. Raleigh, M. T. McGuire, G. L. Brammer, and A. Yuwiler, “Social and Environmental Influences on Blood Serotonin Concentrations in
Monkeys,” Archives of General Psychiatry, 41 (1984): 405–410.

  16 Studies of rhesus monkeys: These studies are summarized and referenced in J. D. Higley and M. Linnoila, “Low Central Nervous System Serotonergic Activity Is Traitlike and Correlates with Impulsive Behavior: A Nonhuman Primate Model Investigating Genetic and Environmental Influences on Neurotransmission,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 836 (1997): 39–56.

  17 While it is unlikely: The argument against oversimplification is well outlined in G. W. Kraemer, D. E. Schmidt, and M. H. Ebert, “The Behavioral Neurobiology of Self-Injurious Behavior in Rhesus Monkeys: Current Concepts and Relations to Impulsive Behavior in Humans,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 836 (1997): 12–38.