The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness

by Elyn R. Saks

True friends help us chart our course in the world,

matter how crazy it sounded—that was how analysis worked. That was the point. Otherwise, how would she know what was going on inside me? But the people at MU10 didn’t want to know. If they couldn’t tolerate what was in my head, why were any of them in this business? When my scrambled thinking revealed itself, they put me in the hospital version of “time out.” Where was the “treatment” in this?

“If you could arrange things your way, what would that look like and how do you think we could help you get there?”

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

While medication had kept me alive, it had been psychoanalysis that had helped me find a life worth living.

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

The poet Rainer Maria Rilke was offered psychoanalysis. He declined, saying, “Don’t take my devils away because my angels may flee too.”

If you are a person with mental illness, the challenge is to find the life that’s right for you. But in truth, isn’t that the challenge for all of us, mentally ill or not?