The acclaimed author of The Unquiet Mind considers the age-old quest for relief from psychic pain and the role of the gifted healer in the journey back to health.

"To treat, even to cure, is not always to heal." In this expansive cultural history of the treatment and healing of suffering, Kay Jamison writes about what makes an effective healer, and the role of imagination and memory in the regeneration of the mind. From the trauma of the bloodiest battlefields of the twentieth century to her own experience with bipolar disease, Jamison demonstrates how extraordinary psychotherapy can be when administered properly and explores the clinical reality that healing the mind requires, for both doctor and patient. She draws on the cases of W.H.R. Rivers, the renowned doctor who treated shell-shocked WWI soldiers, on the long history of physical treatments for mental distress and the ancient role of religion and myth in healing, and she looks at the heroic figures in our artistic culture who have healed us as a people, such as Paul Robeson. Fires in the Dark is a beautiful meditation on the quest and adventure of true healing.

KAY REDFIELD JAMISON is the Dalio Family Professor in Mood Disorders and a professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, as well as an honorary professor of English at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. She is the author of the national best sellers An Unquiet Mind, Night Falls Fast, and Touched with Fire, and is the coauthor of the standard medical text on bipolar disorder, Manic-Depressive Illness: Bipolar Disorders and Recurrent Depression. Dr. Jamison is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Royal Society of Edinburgh and is a recipient of the Lewis Thomas Prize, the Sarnat International Prize in Mental Health from the National Academy of Medicine, and a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship.