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When I was in my twenties I told my psychiatrist I hated my job and was dissatisfied with my life.

"But you're doing very well for someone with bipolar disorder," he protested.

"I don't compare myself to other manic-depressives," I explained. "I compare myself to other Harvard PhDs."

I quit my detestable job and became an adjunct faculty member at an Ivy League university. I arranged my teaching schedule to dovetail with the hours I wanted to work at a business I was starting with another woman. When our enterprise became successful, I took off a semester so I could work full-time on our dream venture.

I regret I was unable to return to this psychiatrist to tell him how much fun I was having–at least during that temporarily calm period in my life. It's not just that living well is the best revenge and rubbing it in is a satisfying bonus. Psychiatrists need object lessons. They see the patients who don't follow their advice and end up in crisis stabilization units, but they don't know about the ones who reject their preconceptions, leave them for better advisors, and succeed.

Why are the successful mentally ill invisible except for a few superstars? Outside the fifteen-minute psychopharmacology hour, it is often still dangerous to come out of the closet unless you're famous, rich, or tenured.

A manic depressive psychologist who consults on mental health for the government warned me, "Never let them know you're a consumer. They'll pay you less." That's if they hire you in the first place for a role which is not earmarked for a consumer.

I found out about the intensity of stigma firsthand by making a guest appearance at a college class on abnormal psychology. The topic was mood disorders and the format was an interview. The instructor summarized my stellar credentials as a mental health professional when he introduced me. Then he asked me questions about depression and mania which I answered confidently, bringing the material alive.

"And do you have any personal interest in this subject?" he asked.

"Yes," I reply. "I have bipolar disorder." The class was visibly shaken to find that someone who was an expert in abnormal psychology, someone who seemed so normal, someone who was right there in the same room with them, had a mental illness.

Later, I learned that when the instructor debriefed the class, a girl in the front row said she thought I was going to stab her.

How solid does one's identity as a psychologist or poet or lawyer or mechanic have to be before it is not overshadowed by stigma?

I dream of writing a book that has nothing to do with mental illness and touring the country to share my vision. Yet if people know me as a manic depressive, how seriously will they regard my enthusiasm? How will they view my slight eccentricities?

Until I'm well established, until and unless I become a superstar, too, I'll pass.