Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.

The Center Cannot Hold

My Journey Through Madness

Audiobook
57 of 57 copies available
57 of 57 copies available
Professor of psychiatry Elyn R. Saks writes about her struggle with schizophrenia in this unflinching account of her mental illness. In The Center Cannot Hold, Saks draws readers into a nightmare world of medications, a misguided health care system, and social stigmas. But she would not be defeated. With a strength and force of will that most can only imagine, Saks reclaimed her life and went on to achieve great success. "In this engrossing memoir, Saks ... demonstrates a novelist's skill of creating character, dialogue and suspense."-Publishers Weekly, starred review
  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

  • Formats

  • Languages

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      At age 8, Saks experienced night terrors, possibly the first sign of her schizophrenia. By adolescence she began to battle phantom voices, delusions, hallucinations, and a medical industry that tried to overmedicate and isolate her. Compassionate psychiatrists, friends, and her husband balance this picture, but above all stands the courageous and intelligent woman herself, who, despite all, got a degree from Yale Law School and became a professor at USC. Alma Cuervo imbues this memoir with nuanced tones that reflect the author's emotions: the fear that overtakes her when delusions set in, her the denial that she has a mental illness and her hope to be well, the loneliness and isolation she feels, and her strength to keep going. S.W. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from May 14, 2007
      I
      n this engrossing memoir, Saks, a professor of psychiatry at U.C.–San Diego, demonstrates a novelist's skill of creating character, dialogue and suspense. From her extraordinary perspective as both expert and sufferer (diagnosis: “Chronic paranoid schizophrenia with acute exacerbation”; prognosis: “Grave”), Saks carries the reader from the early “little quirks” to the full blown “falling apart, flying apart, exploding” psychosis. “Schizophrenia rolls in like a slow fog,” as Saks shows, “becoming imperceptibly thicker as time goes on.” Along the way to stability (treatment, not cure), Saks is treated with a pharmacopeia of drugs and by a chorus of therapists. In her jargon-free style, she describes the workings of the drugs (“getting med-free,” a constant motif) and the ideas of the therapists and physicians (psychologist, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, cardiologist, endocrinologist). Her personal experience of a world in which she is both frightened and frightening is graphically drawn and leads directly to her advocacy of mental patients' civil rights as they confront compulsory medication, civil commitment, the abuse of restraints and “the absurdities of the mental care system.” She is a strong proponent of talk therapy (”While medication had kept me alive, it had been psychoanalysis that helped me find a life worth living”). This is heavy reading, but Saks's account will certainly stand out in its field.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

Languages

  • English

Loading