Martha Manning is a clinical psychologist and former professor of psychology at George Mason University. She
is the award-winning author of Undercurrents: A Life Beneath the Surface and A Season of Mercy. Her work has appeared
in New Woman, Ladies Home Journal, Health, Mirabella, and The New York Times Book Review.
Review
"A brilliant combination of wit, irony, and despair....Undercurrents is absolutely as good as it
gets."
--Los Angeles Times
"Full of unexpected delights...honest, hilarious, full of hope."
--Dallas Morning News
"Humor, candor, and a respect for the power of image and metaphor to heal."
--Philadelphia Inquirer
"A moving and engaging journal....I found myself laughing out loud."
--Washington Post
"A convincing testament to the inexorable cruelty of depression and a frightening reminder of its unprejudiced
choice of victims."
--New York Times Book Review
"An absolutely absorbing read."
--USA Today
Submitted by Publisher, July, 2001
Summary
Depression transformed Martha Manning from a happy, healthy, and successful wife, mother, professor, and psychotherapist
who "lived with the innocent arrogance that [her] life was the simple product of [her] effort, will, and design"
to a sleepwalker haunted by thoughts of suicide, "a house of cards, held precariously by the fragile conspiracy
of wind, weight, and angle. " Undercurrents chronicles this transformation through Manning's startlingly funny,
deeply affecting, and always honest journal entries. Outlining the depths and dimensions of severe clinical depression,
Manning's quick wit and razor-sharp powers of observation allow us to laugh at and empathize with the mounting
disarray in her life: insurmountable household clutter, nightly insomnia, manic, caffeine-fueled efforts to meet
deadlines. We understand her terror as she evaluates a new patient only to realize that she herself meets all of
the textbook criteria of depression, and feel her nowhere-to-turn despair as she is forced to acknowledge that
the love of her family, the support of her therapist, and the exhaustive drug treatments administered by her psychiatrist
are not succeeding in stemming the tide of her disease. Finally, Manning agrees to electroconvulsive therapy, or
ECT. Notorious for its past abuses, its safety and efficacy open to debate, this controversial treatment becomes
her last resort and only hope.
Like the lucid madness chronicled in Girl, Interrupted, this riveting memoir traces the devastating path
of clinical depression through the diaries of Martha Manning--a psychotherapist who became a patient and underwent
electroshock therapy.
