Elyn R. Saks’s The Center Cannot Hold Reviewed by Sheldon Goodman
I recently completed a book that should be required reading for those in our field. I have never read a book that so eloquently portrays the trials and tribulations of someone fighting a lifelong battle with a psychiatric illness, Elyn R. Saks’s The Center Cannot Hold (2007). If one searches for a clear understanding of what a patient struggles with and how the mental health system can help and hinder this process this book is it. She admits us to the inner working of her mind, the development of her disorder and her courageous struggle to maintain herself. In the end she is victorious. She is a professor of Law and an adjunct professor of psychiatry at the University of California. We are also privy to her treatment in psychiatric hospitals and her twists and turns as a psychiatric/psychoanalytic patient. I found it fits with great coherence my experiences working in psychiatric hospitals and providing psychoanalytically oriented treatment. We also get an inside peek of the machinations that take place in our psychoanalytic institutes. This is my Fourth of July present to you -our reader of the International Blog. Enjoy.
I would enjoy hearing any comments you might have of your travel through this glorious and heart-wretching book.
Sheldon M. Goodman
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July 4th, 2008 at 9:07 am
This is indeed a marvelous and exceptional book. Saks is a brilliant and accomplsihed law professor and psychoanalytic scholar whose account of her life as impacted by a severe psychiatric illness (she calls its schizophrenia; many of us would think of it as schizoaffective disorder)shows what can happen when a determined person works with committed analysts in the face of a truly horrible illness. It addresses matters ranging from the role of the analyst, to medication, to the impact of stigma and incomprehension on Saks. It also speaks to the enormous importance of friendship. But most important it speaks to the role of respect and compassion both from the analyst’s side and the patient’s side in supporting psycholgical development despite enormous difficulty.
Anyone who is associated with severe psychiatric illness whether personally or professionally should read this truly inspiring work.
July 12th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
I was moved by the struggle and determination of Dr. Saks. My reading of this is as a practicing psychoanalyst, as psychiatric nurse of forty years and and a current nursing educator in the field of psychiatric/ /mental health nursing. Much of the focus of my teaching is on the lived experience of the person. In these times of technology and diagnostic criteria the challenge is presented to us to create an environment for students to be able to experience and reflect upon themselves and their patients in every area of nursing. This will be required reading for my students. I am grateful to Dr. Saks for having the courage to write her story and share it with us.
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:14 am
I do not understand why psychiatrists or psychoanalysts on this international site can say this about the book of Saks.
Okay: it’s a good romance. It’s really to appreciate that Elyn studied so much to reach such high university-working-positions, but she DID not recover, while recovery from schizophrenia is ALSO possible. In America L. Davidson experiments recovery from schizophrenic patients and so does Loreman and people in Vermont, in Canada, in England, in Germany, in Italy, in Holland. Look at the well known examples of Ken Steele, of the norvegian Arnhild Lauveng. I myself recovered also completely from a delirious paranoid schizophrenia that lasted 3 and a half years. But I did not recover by ‘classic’ psychoanalysis, but with the help of psychotherapy: I myself with several years of a more psychoanalytic and less cognitive psychotherapy. Ken Steele with psychotherapy. Arnhild Lauveng by moreover occupational therapy and also some kind of talking therapy.
About my recovery there is a short article under the european WMHO-site. Since half 2002 I am withour psychofarmakon.
Recovery is possible!!!!
February 28th, 2012 at 9:32 am
How was she able to so accurately reproduce what her “voices” or imaginary demons said to her?