Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness by William Styron (1990) is the author’s introspective of one of his depressive periods over about three months in 1985. He describes how he managed this intense and dark period in his life – from emergence of the symptoms to the darkest of emotions, and to eventual healing.
William Styron (1925-2006) is the author of Sophie’s Choice (1979), adapted into the 1982 award-winning movie set in Brooklyn starring Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline.
In October 1985, William Styron was in Paris for four days to accept a literature award and to attend a luncheon at La Coupole restaurant. He is 60 years old. Instead of feeling elated, he has ‘insomnia and malaise.’ He shocks his guests by declining to attend the celebratory lunch before realizing the impact of his decision, and reluctantly attends.
This is his first bout of clinical depression ‘in the unipolar form’ which, he writes, led him ‘straight down’ to despair. He writes that neither medications nor psychotherapy were able to arrest his plunge toward the depth. His descent led to seven weeks in hospital, where he felt ‘sudden stabilization.’ He adds, ‘for me, the real healers were seclusion and time.’
His recovery is also supported with daily telephone calls from a friend, and with music.
Styron openly and honestly writes of his emotions and thoughts as he tries to discover the cause of his malaise, his attempts to deal with his dysfunctional daily life, his relationship with his wife Rose, and the pivot point that changed his downward trajectory.
This is a short 84-page book, cathartic for the author, and of interest to readers who follow William Styron’s psychological writings that explores the fragile mind and break the silence surrounding mental health.
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MARTINA NICOLLS
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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, foreign aid audits and evaluations, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009). She lives in Paris.
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