The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness

by Elyn R. Saks

Schizophrenia rolls in like a slow fog, becoming imperceptibly thicker as time goes on.

Philosophy and psychosis have more in common than many people (philosophers especially) might care to admit. The similarity is not what you might think—that philosophy and psychosis don’t have rules, and you’re tossed around the universe willy-nilly. On the contrary, each is governed by very strict rules. The trick is to discover what those rules are, and in both cases, that inquiry takes place almost solely inside one’s head. And, while the line between creativity and madness can be razor thin (a fact that has been unfortunately romanticized), examining and experiencing the world in a different way can lead to sharp and fruitful insights.

When you’re really crazy, respect is like a lifeline someone’s throwing you. Catch this and maybe you won’t drown.

Some months later—at a point at which Tony would perhaps have been out of the hospital anyway—Dan got a phone call from Tony: He was being held in prison on a murder charge. He had burned down the family trailer with his mother, father, and seven-year-old brother still inside; they’d all died. Dan was devastated; indeed, the entire mental health law class was. For a bunch of idealistic law students, some lessons were harder to learn than others, and this one—that “helping people” isn’t always a good thing (or, maybe, that “helping” translates differently from case to case, and must be cautiously scrutinized)—was tragic for all parties. The caveat, of course, is that there is no way of knowing whether Dan’s intervention made any significant difference in how Tony’s story turned out.

A friend used the riptide analogy: You get sucked in, and your first instinct is to fight it. The harder you fight, the more energy you spend. But the simple truth is, a riptide is stronger than you; you cannot outmuscle it, and if you continue to try (if you exercise, as I continually did, “maladaptive stubbornness”), you drown. The simple lesson (as California surfers learn over and over every year) is to stop fighting and go with it. Save your strength, stop fighting, and the riptide itself will quickly propel you out of harm’s way, into calmer waters. At that point, if you’ve preserved your energy, you can make it back to shore on your own. But first, you have to give in.

Ironically, the more I accepted I had a mental illness, the less the illness defined me—at which point the riptide set me free.