The Center Cannot Hold

Prof. Saks discusses newly published memoir

-By Gilien Silsby

Prof. Elyn Saks was greeted with a standing ovation from USC Law faculty, students and staff after speaking about her courageous — and, at times, harrowing — battle with schizophrenia and acute psychosis.

In the noontime discussion held Sept. 11, Saks for the first time talked at USC Law about her newly published memoir , The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness (Hyperion, 2007), where she chronicles her illness from her days as a young girl in Florida. A book signing followed the talk.

Until the book was published, only Saks’ closest friends knew of her condition, which she controls with daily therapy and medication.

“I wanted to write this book to give hope to people who suffer from schizophrenia and understanding to people who don’t,” said Saks, an expert in the field of mental health law who also holds faculty appointments at the Keck School of Medicine at USC and the psychiatry department at the UC San Diego School of Medicine. “I hope this story will help implode the myths that surround mental illness.” 

However ironic, Saks’ mind has been her salvation, Saks told the crowd of about 200. Even as her brain attacks her with fear and hallucinations, it also provides the source of her greatest pride and stability — her work.

At USC, she throws herself into writing and spends nearly every waking hour in her crowded office in the law school. Since her arrival at USC in 1989, she has been among the school’s most productive and respected scholarly writers.

Saks also always achieved academically. She was valedictorian at Vanderbilt University, graduated with honors from Yale Law School, was a Marshall scholar at Oxford, and today is a respected legal scholar at USC Law.

Her book has received favorable reviews in major newspapers and was featured in the Los Angeles Times, People and Newsweek. She also has been interviewed on the National Public Radio programs "Fresh Air," “Talk of the City” and "Justice Talking," among others.

Saks was in her 40s before she was able to admit to herself that her illness was not going away, and that medication and psychoanalysis would be necessary for the rest of her life.

“For 20 years I struggled with acceptance.…Ironically, the more I accepted I had a mental illness, the less the illness defined me — at which point the riptide set me free,” she said.