The office where Flaherty writes is one floor down from her movement disorders clinic. Letters run up the back of her wrist. They are one consequence of hypergraphia, the overwhelming urge to write; she writes during manias and edits during depressions. She keeps the illness under control with medication. Jerrold F. Rosenbaum, chief of psychiatry at Mass General, says he used to get notes from her on napkins.

“I save everything she sends me, which I don’t do with anyone else,” he said. “She has enhanced theories of the mind—enhanced in quantity, quality, volume and intensity.” The wrist notes could be on any of a dozen topics. They may be more thoughts on empathic pain, or about research she is conducting on the side about light boxes and creativity in Harvard undergraduates.

In the movement disorders clinic, she follows about 130 patients—the stable ones annually, the still suffering every few weeks. She specialises in deep brain stimulation; electrodes are implanted in the brain to treat Parkinson’s disease, tremors, dystonias and depressions. And she has developed a subspecialty appropriate to someone still struggling with her own moods.

“People can become manic or depressed as a side effect of deep brain stimulation,” said Dr. Anne B. Young, director of the Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease at Mass General. “Alice is a master at managing this.” Flaherty’s explanation was simple. “Neurology and psychiatry should be treating the same organ,” she said.

For Flaherty, each day holds reminders of her dual citizenship. Recently, she was interviewing someone with a rare brain lesion when her cellphone rang. She was needed for another interview across town in front of a class of Harvard Medical psychiatry students. She was the patient.
-ELISSA ELY(NYT)