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The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness
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The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness Hardcover - 2007 - 1st Edition

by Elyn R. Saks

Saks managed to achieve both professional and personal success in spite of being diagnosed as schizophrenic and given a grave prognosis. In this memoir, she frankly and movingly discusses the disease, and the treatments that helped her to cope and thrive.


Summary

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 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.

From the publisher

A much-praised memoir of living and surviving mental illness as well as "a stereotype-shattering look at a tenacious woman whose brain is her best friend and her worst enemy" (Time). 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.

Details

  • Title The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness
  • Author Elyn R. Saks
  • Binding Hardcover
  • Edition number 1st
  • Edition 1
  • Pages 352
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Hachette Books, New York
  • Date 2007-08-14
  • ISBN 9781401301385 / 140130138X
  • Weight 1.09 lbs (0.49 kg)
  • Dimensions 8.54 x 6.1 x 1.1 in (21.69 x 15.49 x 2.79 cm)
  • Ages 18 to 17 years
  • Grade levels 13 - 12
  • Themes
    • Sex & Gender: Feminine
  • Library of Congress subjects Mental illness, Schizophrenia
  • Dewey Decimal Code B

Media reviews

Citations

  • Booklist, 05/15/2007, Page 7
  • Kirkus Reviews, 05/15/2007, Page 490
  • Library Journal, 06/01/2007, Page 136
  • New York Review of Books, 04/17/2008, Page 24
  • Publishers Weekly, 05/14/2007, Page 39
  • Time, 12/24/2007, Page 75

About the author

Elyn R. Saks is a professor at the University of Southern California Law School and the University of California, and Research Clinical Associate at the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. She graduated from Oxford as a Marshall Scholar and received her J.D. from Yale Law School. She has published three books and more than two dozen articles, and serves on the board of several mental health foundations. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Will Vinet.
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