My Symptoms, Myself: Reading Mental Illness Memoirs for Identity Assumptions

Abstract Portrayals of the relationship between self and psychological symptoms in first person narratives about psychiatric illness and recovery are conspicuously varied.1 Much of this variation will obviously be attributable to the symptoms themselves—not only their degree of disabling severity but also their nature more generally. Some of these states and traits are more abhorrent and painful than others, for example, and some affect moods, capabilities, and responses more central to self and self identity than others—as, I shall argue, does depression.