Written with disarming honesty by a long-term sufferer of bipolar
disorder, with more than half a century's experience of intervention and
treatment, this highly personal volume traces the effectiveness of a
therapy modality for mental illness that has gained much ground in the
past two decades: art. The author began to use art, and in particular
doodling, from 1998 as a way of externalizing his feelings. Its
expressiveness, accessibility and energy-efficiency was ideally suited
to the catatonia he experienced during the bouts of depression that are
a feature of bipolar disorder, while as the low moods lifted and his
energy surged, he completed more ambitious and elaborate works. As well
as being highly eclectic, Wheatley's assembled oeuvre has afforded him
both insights and therapeutic intervention into his condition, once
deemed highly debilitating and taboo, but much more socially accepted
now that well known sufferers such as Stephen Fry have recounted their
experiences of the condition. After an opening account of how the images
were generated, the volume reproduces a 'gallery' of selected work, and
then offers an extended epilogue analyzing the art's connections with
the disorder as well as the author's assessment of how each attempt at
visual self-expression was, for him, a therapeutic intervention.
Wheatley, a cell biologist who has enjoyed a full career in cancer
research, has had no formal training in art, yet his haunting pictures,
many of them resembling life forms, are brought to life by his
perceptive, self-aware commentary. This book will be of interest to
psychologists and psychiatrists among the wider medical profession as
well as people suffering from any form of bipolar disorder whatever the
severity.
