Kay Redfield Jamison at the Cambridge Public Library

Harvard Book Store and the Cambridge Public Library welcome KAY REDFIELD JAMISON—Dalio Professor in Mood Disorders and professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Robert Lowell: Setting the River on Fire—for a discussion of the paperback release of her book Fires in the Dark: Healing the Unquiet Mind. She will be joined in conversation by DR. ARTHUR KLEINMAN—author of The Soul of Care and professor of global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Ticketing

RSVP for free to this event or choose the "Book-Included" ticket to reserve a paperback copy of Fires in the Dark and pick it up at the event. Kay will sign copies of her new book after the presentation.

About Fires in the Dark

“To treat, even to cure, is not always to heal.” In this expansive cultural history of the treatment and healing of mental suffering, Kay Jamison writes about psychotherapy, what makes a great healer, and the role of imagination and memory in regenerating the mind. From the trauma of the battlefields of the twentieth century, to those who are grieving, depressed, or with otherwise unquiet minds, to her own experience with bipolar illness, Jamison demonstrates how remarkable psychotherapy and other treatments can be when done well. She argues that not only patients but doctors must be healed. She draws on the example of W.H.R. Rivers, the renowned psychiatrist who treated poet Siegfried Sassoon and other World War I soldiers, and discusses the long history of physical treatments for mental illness, as well as the ancient and modern importance of religion, ritual, and myth in healing the mind. She looks at the vital role of artists and writers, as well as exemplary figures, such as Paul Robeson, who have helped to heal us as a people. Fires in the Dark is a beautiful meditation on the quest and adventure of healing the mind, on the power of accompaniment, and the necessity for knowledge.