I recently completed a book that should be required reading for those in our field. I have never read a book that so eloquently portrays the trials and tribulations of someone fighting a lifelong battle with a psychiatric illness, Elyn R. Saks’s The Center Cannot Hold (2007). If one searches for a clear understanding of what a patient struggles with and how the mental health system can help and hinder this process this book is it. She admits us to the inner working of her mind, the development of her disorder and her courageous struggle to maintain herself. In the end she is victorious. She is a professor of Law and an adjunct professor of psychiatry at the University of California. We are also privy to her treatment in psychiatric hospitals and her twists and turns as a psychiatric/psychoanalytic patient. I found it fits with great coherence my experiences working in psychiatric hospitals and providing psychoanalytically oriented treatment. We also get an inside peek of the machinations that take place in our psychoanalytic institutes. This is my Fourth of July present to you -our reader of the International Blog. Enjoy.
I would enjoy hearing any comments you might have of your travel through this glorious and heart-wretching book.
Sheldon M. Goodman