The Flight of the Mind: Virginia Woolf's Art and Manic-Depressive Illness

by Thomas C. Caramagno, Kay Redfield Jamison (Afterword)

In this major new book on Virginia Woolf, Caramagno contends psychobiography has much to gain from a closer engagement with science. Literary studies of Woolf's life have been written almost exclusively from a psychoanalytic perspective. They portray Woolf as a victim of the Freudian "family romance," reducing her art to a neurotic evasion of a traumatic childhood.

But current knowledge about manic-depressive illness―its genetic transmission, its biochemistry, and its effect on brain function―reveals a new relationship between Woolf's art and her illness. Caramagno demonstrates how Woolf used her illness intelligently and creatively in her theories of fiction, of mental functioning, and of self structure. Her novels dramatize her struggle to imagine and master psychic fragmentation. They helped her restore form and value to her own sense of self and lead her readers to an enriched appreciation of the complexity of human consciousness.

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Mental Health, Mental Illness, Biography, Literary Criticism

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

Reviews

[Madi Nelson]

THIS IS THE BOOK!! if you want to learn more about virginia woolf and her “madness” and how it contributed to her writings, this is the book you need to read. i don’t read every section, since a lot of it is already knew from research, but it goes very in depth and gives a lot of great context for her works.