The Center Cannot Hold

Elyn Saks is an endowed professor at the prestigious University of Southern California Gould School of Law. She managed to achieve this despite being diagnosed as schizophrenic and given a grave prognosis—and suffering the effects of her illness throughout her life. As a child, Saks was only eight when her first symptoms appeared in the form of obsessions and night terrors. But it wasn't until she reached Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar that her first full-blown episode, complete with voices in her head and terrifying suicidal fantasies, forced her into a psychiatric hospital. She later attended Yale Law School, where one night during her first term, she had a breakdown that left her singing on the roof of the law school library at midnight. She was taken to the emergency room after being found there by campus security officers, who deemed her behavior strange enough to warrant their attention; she wasforce-fedd antipsychotic medication and tied hand-and-foot to the cold metal of a hospital bed.