The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness

by Elyn R. Saks

I’d driven myself hard in one direction, and then, once challenged, I drove myself hard in completely the opposite direction. And the whole time, I was in complete control—or so I thought.

There are forces of nature and circumstance that are beyond our control, let alone our understanding, and to insist on victory in the face of this, to accept nothing less, is just asking for a soul-pummeling. The simple truth is, not every fight can be won.

But it never occurred to me to ask.

very few of those kids actually neglect to bathe or shampoo or brush their teeth regularly—because that would almost certainly guarantee an instant end to their social life. What, then, was happening to me?

So why was I unlearning the most basic of lessons: simple cleanliness?

Some days, the answers were clear as a bell: Yes, of course. For heaven’s sake, Elyn, clean yourself up! And so I did. But other days, the questions and the answers were just too hard to sort out.

it meant strategizing, organizing, keeping track.

being made to feel special.

In fact, I’d scared myself—I had no idea what had come over me. I had no clue.

whose own intellectual curiosity seemed to give them a real purpose in the world.

Philosophy and psychosis have more in common than many people (philosophers especially) might care to admit.

The trick is to discover what those rules are, and in both cases, that inquiry takes place almost solely inside one’s head.

But once away from Vanderbilt, from the community I’d found there and the structure that academic life

imposed on me, I began almost immediately to falter. I felt no enthusiasm for a summer vacation, or spending time with family or old high school friends, and in spite of the objective evidence of good grades, I couldn’t summon any particular pride in what I’d accomplished. Instead, I felt gloomy, uncertain, and oddly depleted.

My flippant answer was an indication of my poor situational judgment:

nothing I had to say was worth hearing, or so said my mind.

with no reference point outside my head (friends, familiarity, being able to accomplish anything at school), I began to live entirely inside it.

and I tried to calm down sufficiently to pay respectful attention to the questions she was asking.

I’d start a sentence, then be unable to remember where I was going with it.

and a profound isolation that every day seemed to burrow more deeply into me.

Throughout each day, I often felt caught somewhere in between.

I wanted to hit my head with something hard.

it was a mark of my impaired judgment that I believed I’d actually be able to pull it off.

“I think it’s wrong to eat,” I told them. “So I do not eat.”

When you’re really crazy, respect is like a lifeline someone’s throwing you.

but it was exhausting.

fierce, angry, jagged around the edges, and uncontrollable.

I could not bear to be near anyone when I was experiencing them.

Not real people with names or faces, but shapeless, powerful beings that controlled me with thoughts (not voices) that had been placed in my head. Walk through the tunnels and repent. Now lie down and don’t move. You must be still.

You are evil.

It never occurred to me that disobedience was an option, although it was never clear what might happen if I disobeyed. I do not...

Another command (or thought, or message) I continually received was to hurt myself.

holding myself as protection from unseen forces that might harm me.

That means resuming the work you love.

“For a person like this, it is analysis or nothing.”

I was to say everything that came to my mind, no matter how embarrassing, trivial, or inappropriate it might seem.

Kleinian analysis, a

which even as I whispered them out loud gave me great shame.

Instead, I had come to believe that everyone had these thoughts or feelings, this sense of a force or evil energy pushing on them to do evil or be destructive.

all the while plotting ways to keep Mrs. Jones from abandoning me:

At times, though, I was so psychotic that I could barely contain myself.

and if my energy goes to you, I won’t have any left to fight it. I will not be able to keep it at bay. You will be in danger. We will all be in terrible danger.

struggling through the densest of that literature while in the grip of psychosis.

helping people with mental illness.

I lay on the floor and clutched her legs, muttering that I could not live without her.

needed the structure and the challenge,

Mrs. Jones was pulling me by the hair.

How could this be my Mrs. Jones, yanking at my hair and ignoring my cries for her to stop being so unkind?

She had been the tether that held me to the outside world, the repository for my darkest thoughts, the person who tolerated all the bad and evil that lay within me, and never judged. She was my translator, in a world where I felt most often like an alien. How could I survive in this world without her?

trying frantically every single moment to keep the demons in my head from invading the plane and savaging the other passengers.