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The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness Paperback – August 12, 2008
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Elyn R. Saks is an esteemed professor, lawyer, and psychiatrist and is the Orrin B. Evans Professor of Law, Psychology, Psychiatry, and the Behavioral Sciences at the University of Southern California Law School, yet she has suffered from schizophrenia for most of her life, and still has ongoing major episodes of the illness.
The Center Cannot Hold is the eloquent, moving story of Elyn's life, from the first time that she heard voices speaking to her as a young teenager, to attempted suicides in college, through learning to live on her own as an adult in an often terrifying world. Saks discusses frankly the paranoia, the inability to tell imaginary fears from real ones, the voices in her head telling her to kill herself (and to harm others), as well as the incredibly difficult obstacles she overcame to become a highly respected professional. This beautifully written memoir is destined to become a classic in its genre.
- Print length368 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHachette Books
- Publication dateAugust 12, 2008
- Reading age18 years and up
- Dimensions5.5 x 1 x 8.5 inches
- ISBN-109781401309442
- ISBN-13978-1401309442
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"Her descriptions of her descents into psychosis are riveting."--Entertainment Weekly (Grade: A-)
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : 1401309445
- Publisher : Hachette Books; Reprint edition (August 12, 2008)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 368 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9781401309442
- ISBN-13 : 978-1401309442
- Reading age : 18 years and up
- Item Weight : 11.2 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 1 x 8.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #17,240 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3 in Schizophrenia (Books)
- #42 in Medical Psychology Pathologies
- #705 in Memoirs (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Elyn R. Saks is the Orrin B. Evans Professor of Law and Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences at the University of Southern California Law School and a research clinical associate at the Los Angeles Psychiatric Society and Institute. She is the author of Jekyll on Trial: Multiple Personality Disorder and Criminal Law and Interpreting Interpretation: The Limits of Hermeneutic Psychoanalysis.
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Elyn R. Saks is a professor who has struggled with schizophrenia for most of her life. As a child she became slightly obsessive compulsive and then anorexic. As she grew older she started to have more symptoms of the disease and suffered for many years without medication.
Throughout the book you will read completely honest revelations of what it is like to be on medication and to be off medication. You will be amazed at how creative a writer Elyn R. Saks is and how she remembers precises details of her life, even down to conversations she had with numerous people. Obviously she has a brilliant mind to remember with such clarity.
At times this book can be shockingly honest but it is never frightening as I thought it might be. Elyn R. Saks always seems to have protections in place so when she falls gravely ill she has a support system and friends to help her.
For some of the book you may feel frustrated that Elyn R. Saks thinks she can function without medication. Each time she is thrown back into a debilitating psychosis. The triggers are interesting and for that reason I think this book can explain a mentally ill person's basic needs for understanding and support.
As we watch Elyn R. Saks struggle with her demons we are invited into a very private world of fears most will never experience. People who are mentally ill will however really relate to the hallucinations and voices and feeling of impending doom.
Overall this book is a captivating and compelling story of one woman's journey to happiness and success. As I finished this book I was so glad I had read it. The ending is profound and when Elyn R. Saks comes to terms with her illness you will feel a great sense of relief.
~The Rebecca Review
Saks is an acclaimed professor of law and psychiatry. She also struggles with severe symptoms of schizophrenia. She risked her reputation in academia in order to give hope to others like herself, and to counter the negative stereotypes about mental illness held by both the general public and mental health professionals:
"I wanted to dispel the myths ... that people with a significant thought disorder cannot live independently, cannot work at challenging jobs, cannot have true friendships, cannot be in meaningful, sexually satisfying love relationships, cannot lead lives of intellectual, spiritual, or emotional richness."
The topic is inherently compelling, and Saks masterfully describes what it is like to be tormented by inner demons, to be forcibly restrained on a hospital bed, to require medications that alter one's mental state and can cause horrific, irreversible side effects. She articulately describes her years of talk therapy, in which she came to understand the functional underpinnings of her psychotic thoughts, for example in warding off feelings that would have been consciously threatening.
I enjoyed her dry humor in highlighting the condescension and absurdities of the mental health system. In one case she reviewed during a legal internship, the patient was restrained because he refused to get out of bed. In another case, a young man was deemed delusional because he continually spoke with "imaginary lawyers" - who turned out to be none other than Saks and her colleague.
For years, in order to excel, Saks had to lead a double life. Swirling around her, constantly threatening, was the stigma of mental illness. While writing an academic paper on restraints, she asked a professor, "Wouldn't you agree that being restrained is incredibly degrading, not to mention painful and frightening?" With a kind and knowing look, the professor responded: "These people are different from you and me. It doesn't affect them the way it would affect us."
This book is especially important reading for mental health professionals in the United States, where medication reigns supreme (it has become practically taboo to recommend psychotherapy for severe psychosis, despite ongoing research establishing its efficacy) and coercion often trumps choice. Saks contrasts her experiences of being hospitalized both in the United States and in England, where restraints have not been in widespread use for more than 200 years. In doing so, she gives us a deeper appreciation of the trauma induced by coercive and sometimes brutal treatment.
"The Little Engine that Could" is what her close friend Steve Behnke calls her, referring to her indomitable spirit even in the face of hospital clinicians' dire predictions about her future.
I highly recommend this courageous and brilliant memoir.