Bipolar Expeditions: Mania and Depression in American Culture

by Emily Martin

Manic behavior holds an undeniable fascination in American culture today. It fuels the plots of best-selling novels and the imagery of MTV videos, is acknowledged as the driving force for successful entrepreneurs like Ted Turner, and is celebrated as the source of the creativity of artists like Vincent Van Gogh and movie stars like Robin Williams. Bipolar Expeditions seeks to understand mania's appeal and how it weighs on the lives of Americans diagnosed with manic depression. Anthropologist Emily Martin guides us into the fascinating and sometimes disturbing worlds of mental-health support groups, mood charts, psychiatric rounds, the pharmaceutical industry, and psychotropic drugs. Charting how these worlds intersect with the wider popular culture, she reveals how people living under the description of bipolar disorder are often denied the status of being fully human, even while contemporary America exhibits a powerful affinity for manic behavior. Mania, Martin shows, has come to be regarded as a distant frontier that invites exploration because it seems to offer fame and profits to pioneers, while depression is imagined as something that should be eliminated altogether with the help of drugs. Bipolar Expeditions argues that mania and depression have a cultural life outside the confines of diagnosis, that the experiences of people living with bipolar disorder belong fully to the human condition, and that even the most so-called rational everyday practices are intertwined with irrational ones. Martin's own experience with bipolar disorder informs her analysis and lends a personal perspective to this complex story.Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Anthropology, Mental Health, Mental Illness, Bodies, Academic

397 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Athena Macmillan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was basically my life for a whole semester.

Emily Martin’s Bipolar Expeditions takes a focused look at United States culture and society, particularly in regards to how it views people with bipolar disorder and to an extent other mental illness as well. Her work in this book suggests that in a country that is so geared towards viewing success in economic and political terms, different aspects of bipolar are both revered and feared. To a critical outside observer, the slowing down and more introverted aspects of depression associated with bipolar can be viewed as succumbing to the pressures of what is deemed ‘normal’ life, while the more hectic side of bipolar, mania, is almost viewed as a type of creative energy that keeps pushing against all odds to achieve this nebulous idea of success.

Martin draws on her own experiences with being diagnosed with manic depression and subsequent psychosis in the US mental healthcare system as both inspiration for, and hindrance to her research. She found conflicting societal views that could shape a person’s experience with this kind of mental illness raging from praise for the creative potential of a manic high, to the barely concealed disparagement of the ability of someone with mental illness to function in an academic environment in institutions such as Princeton.

While it seems this work by Martin does face some shortcomings in discussing the day to day reality of those living with manic depression, it also presents very valid concerns about how society markets some aspects of bipolar disorder while demonising others. However because of this, there does seem to be a tendency through the piece to lump the manic appearing nature of individuals driven to financial success in the same category as those suffering with mania as a mental illness, which may serve to marginalise their experiences as individuals. What is clear however, is that bipolar disorder, as well as other forms of mental illness, do not exist in isolation from a broader cultural context. Mental illness both influences and is influenced by cultural norms and politics. In this light, Martin appears to maintain, mental illness can be viewed as both being produced through culture and being productive of culture, with socially acceptable forms of engagement inevitably being as fluid as the highs and lows of manic depression itself.

[Regina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I especially recommend this book for anybody who has bipolar disorder or knows somebody close to them struggling with this disorder. Emily Martin has really chosen a personal topic this time. She reveals her own struggles with bipolar disorder and her search for medication. She spent years interviewing people with this disorder, visiting support groups and even interviewing pharmaceutical advertising execs. However what is really interesting about this book is Martin's ability to track mania as a cultural object throughout history. She shows how mania has been associated with femininity and masculinity in Western culture. She also asks why mania is often cast as a desirable form of creative productivity in the contemporary business world. Finally, she starts to show through interviews with real people how these cultural ideals can actually be troublesome for those who suffer from this disease.

[Juliana Philippa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Martin's examination of rationality and irrationality brings up many interesting questions. She looks at things through the lens of an "American culture" that prizes mania in some people under certain circumstances, yet reviles it and is repulsed by it in others in various contexts. (Her generalization of an entrepreneurial American culture is not fully explained nor supported). Martin explores the boundaries of normality and how decisions are made about who is sane and who is insane. Her argument that rationality and irrationality are not bounded categories, but rather overlapping and intertwining, being possible and observable in all people, is extremely compelling.

[Would give the book 3.5 stars]

[Charles Michael Fischer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent Bipolar ethnography. I especially enjoyed Part I, "Manic Depression as Experience."

[Daniel D · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a textbook so it can be a bit of a dense read at time. Overall though, I enjoyed reading the book & learning more about bipolar disorder from an anthropological perspective.

[Kaylia · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the auto ethnography, Bipolar Expeditions, Emily Martin writes about her experience of being bipolar. Such auto-ethnography challenges the reader to consider understandings of diagnosis, what is mania and being manic, moods and emotions, rational and irrational, all while dealing within the medical sphere that is ableist against those with mental health disorders. Martin recounts her experience and diagnosis of manic depression, and relates it all to wider issues of American culture and historical insights of mental disorders. A notion brought forward by this book that was interesting, was how the American ideal of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps plays a role in how well we see someone who has manic depression. That if someone is creative and productive, they are working past their disability to be a functioning member of our capitalist society. Although if someone is displaying their symptoms and unable to fit the standard required for being in a job and working, then they are seen as deviant.
The role of support groups and psychotropic medications is an important aspect to those with bipolar disorder. A major key aspect to support groups is the notion of the first and second voice, and its relationship to being able to be rational vs irrational, controlled or uncontrolled. One with bipolar has a second voice that needs to be subdued to be able to live a normal and rational life. That those with this disorder are seen as without self-awareness. Although being in support groups, there is a place for those to express their self-awareness, and to be in a place that is safe to be manic (pg 76), and the lines of rational and irrational are blurred (pg77). Medications make grand promises (because of investors through advertisements) to make an individual be normal and continue a normal life. While also giving them side effects that are identifiable and seen as abnormal (such as drooling). The drugs are offered speed dating, where if one does not work you either mix it with something or try another. There is a complex relationship between the drugs helping but also hurting with side effects and needing more drugs to combat those drugs.

[Parker Eisen]

A thorough analysis of the many factors that make up what it means to “live under the description of manic-depressive.” How culturally the BP subject is forced to live in the constrains of the market which at once fetishes and wishes to annihilate such a subject. I wish Martin would’ve asked and possibly answered the question “What happens to the BP subject if they are not subjected to the capitalist world?”

That is to say, the highs of a mania—excessive spending, sociality, intense motivation would be capped by a caring, socialist society that understands and frames disability. Then, the person living under the description of manic depressive, is able to actually live in society without the punishments of productivity. They would be allowed to rise and fall and be caught by the collective in a way that would not exploit mania and punish depression. I get, from Martin’s position as an anthropologist and not say a philosopher would prevent her from wishing to speculate directly in the test but I feel the current of this question.

[Malissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books on bipolar disorder that I've read so far. I have type I bipolar with uni-polar mania. I haven't been depressed in four years and tend to peak with the summer season.

For this reason, I always feel like I only get half a book's contents on this subject. This title focuses on Mania in all it's scary complexity.

[Carolyn Crouch · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really like this book, but I think it could have covered more information about the other side of bpd, and given more in depth view of the realtionship between depression and how it fits into the American capitalist system. One thing I did love about this work is the level of ethnographic research Martin was able to achieve. It was an interesting read and I enjoyed the story she told.

[Joha Van · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly insightful.

[Sophia Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic read! Questions of rationality and irrationality are central!

[Cassie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this for an Culture and Personality course at Purdue University. I enjoyed the book. It gave a different perspective on bipolar disorder in the United States than other books I have read. It appeared to be coming from the point of view of the patient at some points instead of just from the point of views of doctors and researchers. I would recommend it to any one interested in mental illness as it is presented in the United States.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

i had to give it back because it was an interlibrary loan, but it is great!! ethnography of bipolar disorder in contemp. society. PLUS, as an added bonus for yours truly and other econ-minded folks, chapters on the links btwn bipolar disorder and contemporary, market-driven society. i plan to buy, read and teach it for sure.

[Ted Gideonse · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent, and clearly written, ethnography of people with bipolar disorder in the United States. The analysis is top-notch, of course (since it's Emily Martin), but it's also moving and occasionally funny.

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

The description leads one to believe the book is all about celebrities with mental illness. Thankfully, there wasn't much of that. I appreciated the personal accounts from support groups and grand rounds.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

i'm just in the first chapter after a long intro...good info on researcher as insider/outsider though for all you geeky methodologists :)

[Dawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Examines mania's ties to creativity and, breaking new ground, suggests how modern culture purposely incites and harnasses mania in "movers and shakers" and Type A personalities to fuel capitalism.

[Crista Colvin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too epidemiological and anthropological for me.