The Centre Cannot Hold

Highly articulate and self-aware, Elyn Saks offers a moving insight into the world of a schizophrenic. This compelling account will bring hope to sufferers and understanding to all.

Elyn Saks is Professor of Law and Psychiatry at University of Southern California Law School. She's the author of several books. Happily married. And - a schizophrenic. Saks lifts the veil on schizophrenia with her startling and honest account of how she learned to live with this debilitating disease.

With a coolly clear, measured tone she talks about her condition, the stigma attached, and the deadening effects of medication. Her controlled narrative is disrupted by interjections from the part of her mind she has learned to suppress. Delusions, hallucinations, and threatening voices cut into her reality and Saks, in a remarkably vivid way, enables us to hear and see them too.

The Centre Cannot Hold is a powerful book that is as informative as it is moving. There are parallels with Jane Lapotaire's Time Out of Mind and with Girl, Interrupted.