Exuberance: The Passion for Life

On my monitor at work is a quote from Diderot: "Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things." In Exuberance: The Passion for Life, Kay Redfield Jamison, professor of psychology and MacArthur fellow, explores and even celebrates the our capacity for play, passion and enthusiasm.

And what a ride it is! She looks at playful and celebratory behaviors in other animals, examining the possible evolutionary benefits of risk-taking and the chemical and hormonal rewards for discovery and learning. Her exuberant subjects include Snoopy, Tigger, Mr. Toad, Teddy Roosevelt, Richard Feynman, Louis Armstrong, Jane Goodall and many others from history, fiction, and personal interviews. She even warns us of the potential dangers, show more the rocks and shoals of the bounding waves:
Champagne enchants, but it also intoxicates more quickly than stiller wines: heed glides into heedlessness as effortlessly as the silk chemise drops to the floor.
I learned much about my own passions and obsessions (and feel a bit less guilty about them), and after reading Exuberance I feel like I understand some of those unique, absorbed, adventurous individuals who have crossed my path.

This is no a dry science text. Jamison invites us to sip champagne, shoot off fireworks, and celebrate with her in the passionate experience of humanity. show less

There's a lot more published about psychological pathology than there is about positive emotions. Jamison follows up her breakthrough memoir An Unquiet Mind with a multidimension study of exuberance, a bubbly, playful, extremely joyful emotion that seems inextricably tied to what we consider the good life.

Jamison weaves together literary analysis of classic children's stories (Winnie the Pooh, The Wind in the Williow), with biographies of exuberant men (Teddy Roosevelt, P.T. Barnum), and summaries of the psychological research. Exuberance is associated with play in almost all mammals, and play seem to serve key functions in learning, socialization, and allowing organisms to cope with risk. Exuberance may be even more fundamental, as show more Jamison links it to the burst of life in the spring and summer, and to the human ability to experience divine creation. Exuberance has a dangerous side, wearing out people and trending towards mania.

But for all the bubbles, this book offers little insight about exuberance itself, coming down to the safe psychological conventional wisdom that it's a mood that ranks high on both sensation (it feels good) and energy (you want to do more). Exuberance seems like one of those innate traits that stable from birth, either you're exuberance or you're not. show less

Having read both An Unquiet Mind and Night Falls Fast, I looked forward to reading Exuberance. After all, I think Kay Redfield Jamison writes with amazing insight into mental behavior, and the topics she writes about are interesting to me, both in an academic way and for personal reasons -- I have loved ones with bipolar disorder. Unfortunately, Exuberance, rather than being a mostly-scholarly work on positive psychology, is more of a rambling collection of historical anecdotes with some study information tossed in.

Full review: http://libwen.wordpress.com/2010/08/31/exuberance-by-kay-redfield-jamison/

A very bouyant and varied description of exuberance, that effectivly communicates the emotion and leaves you feeling rather exuberant yourself. However this book lacks structure, and does not go into much depth it is a sequence of descriptions of different experiences. But a very enjoyable read nonetheless.

A little heavy on the scientists, but an inspiring read nonetheless. I recommend this book to anyone who has more energy than they know what to do with. There are others out there like you - do not despair!

This is FABULOUS!