Chapter 1 "Into the Sun" Summary and Analysis

In this emotionally-charged memoir, Kay Redfield Jamison recounts, not only her own struggles with manic-depressive illness (also known as bipolar mood disorder), but also how she has been able to use her disease to treat others similarly affected and to crusade for better understanding of the illness. A professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Jamison had learned to manage her disease and become a world expert on manic-depression by the age of forty.

As a second grader at an elementary school near Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, DC, Kay Jamison is playing in the schoolyard when a military jet comes streaking overhead with a huge roar. Because of the school's proximity to the air base, jets overhead were not unusual. However this plane was very low and very...