The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness

by Elyn R. Saks

Mrs. Jones: “Tell me about your difficulties at university.” Me: “I’m not smart enough. I can’t do the work.” Mrs. Jones: “You were first in your class at Vanderbilt. Now you’re upset about Oxford because you want to be the best and are afraid you can’t be. You feel like you are a piece of shit from your mother’s bottom.” Me: “I’m closing the curtains from now on because people across the street are looking at me. They can hear what I’m saying. They are angry. They want to hurt me.” Mrs. Jones: “You are evacuating your angry and hostile feelings onto those people. It is you who are angry and critical. And you want to control what goes on in here.” Me: “I am in control. I control the world. The world is at my whim. I control the world and everything in it.” Mrs. Jones: “You want to feel in control because in fact you feel so helpless.” Me: “I had a dream. I was making golf balls out of fetuses.” Mrs. Jones: “You want to kill babies, you see, and then make a game out of it. You are jealous of the other babies. Jealous of your brothers, jealous of my other patients. You want to kill them. And then you want to turn them into a little ball so you can smack them again. You want your mother and me to love only you.”