Altered Cognition and Affective Experience:
Asian Journal of Human Services May 30, 2026 C Immaculate Catherine Anitha Anitha, R K Jaishree Karthiga
Biomedical models fail to capture the lived cognitive and affective experience of bipolar disorder. This paper analyzes Ellen Forney's graphic memoir "Marbles" as a cognitive-phenomenological archive that enacts and represents mania and depression through graphic form. Using Havi Carel's Phenomenology of Illness and Sara Ahmed's Cultural Politics of Emotion, the study conducts a qualitative phenomenological close reading of six thematic vectors: imaginative cognitive reconfiguration under medication; the 'crazy artist' identity and treatment resistance; costs of untreated illness and psychiatric ethics; mood-dependent memory and cognitive restructuring; graphic formal elements (panel composition, gutter, repetition, visual metaphor)...