Elyn Saks

Elyn Saks is Associate Dean and Orrin B. Evans Professor of Law, Psychology, and Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences at the University of Southern California Gould Law School and an expert in mental health law.

She suffers from schizophrenia and has written about her experience with the illness in her autobiography, The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness published by Hyperion Books, 2007. Dr. Saks is in training as a psychoanalyst in Southern California.

Saks says "there’s a tremendous need to implode the myths of mental illness, to put a face on it, to show people that a diagnosis does not have to lead to a painful and oblique life". In recent years, researchers have begun talking about mental health care in the same way addiction specialists speak of recovery — the lifelong journey of self-treatment and discipline that guides substance abuse programs. The idea remains controversial: managing a severe mental illness is more complicated than simply avoiding certain behaviors. Approaches include "medication (usually), therapy (often), a measure of good luck (always) — and, most of all, the inner strength to manage one’s demons, if not banish them". That strength can come from any number of places, these former patients say: love, forgiveness, faith in God, a lifelong friendship. Saks says "we who struggle with these disorders can lead full, happy, productive lives, if we have the right resources".

Awards

• 2009 MacArthur Fellows Program

Works

• The Center Cannot Hold:, ISBN 9781401301385
• Refusing Care: Forced Treatment and the Rights of the Mentally Ill, ISBN 9780226733975
• Interpreting Interpretation: The Limits of Hermeneutic Psychoanalysis, ISBN 9780300076035
• Jekyll on Trial: Multiple Personality Disorder and Criminal Law, ISBN 9780814797648

External links

• Interview from National Public Radio
• USC Gould Webpage
• Interview on The Charlie Rose Talk Show