The Bipolar Therapist: A Journey from Madness to Love and Meaning by Marcia Naomi Berger; San Rafael, California: Bitachon Press (c) 2024; ISBN 9798990-027503; 294 pages plus discussion pages, $17.95.
SAN DIEGO — Before she was prescribed lithium, author Marcia Naomi Berger experienced manic episodes in which her mind would race all night, preventing sleep, and continue racing the next day with her speech trying to keep up. She would act out her random thoughts, alarming people near her, who would call the police, who in turn would bring her to a hospital for mental illness.
There were several such incidents in a year and a half period, making co-workers wary of her at a treatment facility for alcoholics, where she was a licensed therapist. Subsequently, at the Jewish Family and Children’s Services of the East Bay, where she served as executive director, she was fired, only a year after receiving praise and a commendation for her work.
Although she was not violent, people were scared to be around her because she was so unpredictable. Most of the time, she was a bright and conscientious worker, who could write research papers that won plaudits and requests for copies from other psychiatric social workers. But, prior to lithium, upsetting incidents might knock her off the rails.
Without offering conclusions, her memoir led to speculation that her bipolar condition was inherited. Her maternal grandmother spent much of her life in a mental hospital after she was abandoned by her immigrant husband. Her mother lost her husband via divorce, leading Berger to wonder whether women in her family line were fated to not remain in marriages. Her older sister, however, had a husband, children, and to all appearances a happy marriage.
With so much perceived baggage, Berger was afraid that she would be rejected by any man that showed an interest in her, so before the man could jettison their relationship, she would sabotage it first. Such behavior wasn’t on a conscious level; her therapist helped her to understand the pattern.
It wasn’t until she was in her early 40s and after a good amount of time without manic episodes that she met David, her husband. She didn’t reveal to him her treatments for mental illness until after he indicated that he wanted to marry her. If the information put him off, well, the marriage would not have worked anyway.
In her desire for a husband and children, Berger, who had been raised in a secular Jewish home, explored Orthodox Judaism. She was inspired by a Chabad rabbi in the San Francisco Bay area, and by the Skolye Rebbe, leader of a Brooklyn-based Hasidic sect, who held audiences on a visitation to San Francisco.
The Hasidim encouraged her to find a husband and trust that her marriage would work out well which at the time of the writing had lasted 35 years and still was going strong.
Berger also delved into her relationship with her mother, whom she described as “needy” after she was divorced by Marcia’s father. On the one hand, Berger felt infantilized by her mother, who persisted in calling her “sweetie,” the same endearing name she had been called as a child. On the other hand, there were times when it seemed their roles were reversed — so great was her mother’s need for reassurance that she was worthy of being loved.
The candor with which Berger discusses her bipolar disorder, which had led earlier in her life to feelings of shame and embarrassment, should help uninformed neurotypical readers relate with more understanding toward those with mental illness, reducing if not eliminating entirely undeserved stigma.
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Donald H. Harrison is publisher and editor of San Diego Jewish World.