Whybrow - A Mood Apart: Depression, Mania, and Other Afflictions of the Self

Praise for A Mood Apart

A terrific book for professionals and the public.... A Mood Apart represents a literary achievement as well as a scientific accomplishment. It is not a self-help manual with simple lists and prescriptions, nor a compendium without conclusion of every scientific study. Rather, it is a seamless product resulting from a career of research and clinical practice expressed in lucid, moving style, but not at the expense of integrative complexity.

Contemporary Psychology

This is a masterly and highly readable discourse.... Whybrow has really attempted to enter into the soul of manic depression and has succeeded to a remarkable extent.

British Journal of Psychiatry

Dr. Whybrow has succeeded in presenting a balanced, well-written account of mood disorders and their treatment which will inform the general reader and which also contains much of interest to the professional.

Literary Review

The most thorough and wide-ranging discussion for lay readers about the interplay of the physical and emotional elements of depression and manic-depression.... His presentation is illuminating, and the case histories demonstrate his sensitivity and skill as a clinician.... Whybrows presentation offers a deeper understanding of, along with a humane and wise approach to these very troubling illnesses.

Kirkus

Seldom has the inner emotional landscape of melancholic depression, mania and manic-depressive illness been mapped with so much clarity, empathy and sensitivity.

Publishers Weekly

A Mood Apart is informative, compassionate and, not the least, thoroughly engrossing.

William Styron, author of Darkness Visible

Dr. Peter Whybrow explains everything you ever wanted to know about moods and their vicissitudes, and he does so in wonderfully elegant, highly readable prose.

Maggie Scarf, author of Unfinished Business and Intimate Worlds

Dr. Whybrow has written a wise and graceful book that should be helpful and consoling to patients and their loved ones.

Irvin D. Yalom, author of Loves Executioner and Lying on the Couch

A Mood Apart is a beautifully crafted volume that probes into the recesses of the brain and mind to reveal the secrets of depression. Dr. Whybrow distills a lifetime of experience as a master clinician and scientist.... I highly recommend this definitive work to the nonprofessional as well as the professional.

Aaron T. Beck, MD, university professor emeritus, University of Pennsylvania, and author of Cognitive Therapy of Depression

This compassionate book will console through its effective teaching. Anyone who has dealt with depression will be drawn to it.

Judith Rapoport, MD, chief, child psychiatry, National Institute of Mental Health, and author of The Boy Who Couldnt Stop Washing

A Mood Apart is a tour de force, a new standard in writing for the public.... A masterpiece.... His topic is complex, his explanation scientific and yet deeply rooted in compassion, understanding, perception, and respect for his patients.

Frank Burgmann, president, National Depressive and Manic-Depressive Association

A Mood Apart

Introduction to the 2015 Edition copyright 2015 by Peter C. Whybrow

Paperback first published in 2015 by Basic Books, A Member of the Perseus Books Group

Original copyright 1997 by Peter C. Whybrow.

Excerpt from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1947 by Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Copyright 1975 by Leslie Frost Ballantine. Copyright 1969 by Henry Holt & Co., Inc. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt & Co., Inc.

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address Basic Books, 250 West 57 Street, New York, NY 10107.

Books published by Basic Books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at Perseus Books Group, 2500 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 810-4145, ext. 500, or email .

A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: 978-0-465-09894-1 (new e-book)

ISBN: 978-0-465-04972-1 (original e-book)

A hardcover edition of this book was originally published in 1997 by Henry Holt, Inc. First HarperPerennial edition published 1998.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For my father, Charles Ernest James Whybrow

A MOOD APART

Once down on my knees to growing plants

I prodded the earth with a lazy tool

In time with a medley of sotto chants;

But becoming aware of some boys from school

Who had stopped outside the fence to spy,

I stopped my song and almost heart,

For any eye is an evil eye

That looks in onto a mood apart.

Robert Frost, Steeple Bush (1947)

CONTENTS

Grief, Emotional Homeostasis, and Disorders of Mood

The Experience of Depression

The Experience of Mania

The Development of the Emotional Self

Moods, Morality, and Medical Diagnosis

The Anatomy of the Emotional Brain

Stress, Homeostasis, and the Seasons of Mood

Stress, Vulnerability, and the Feeling of Control

Neurons, Chemistry, and the Pharmacology of Mood

Adaptation and the Care of the Self

Depression and its close cousin manic depression are malignant and deadly diseases. A sad reminder of that truth came in the summer of 2014, just as I was beginning work on this new edition of A Mood Apart. On August 11 Robin Williams, the much beloved actor and comedian, was found dead at his home in Marin County, California, having hanged himself in the small hours of the morning. For several months, as his publicist later explained to the world, Mr. Williams had been battling severe depression. He was sixty-three years old.