Review by Booklist Review
At eight years old, Saks began suffering hallucinations and obsessive fears of being attacked. An adolescent experimentation with drugs provoked her parents to enroll her in a drug treatment program. But Saks' incredible self-control masked the fact that she was suffering from a debilitating mental illness. By the time she entered graduate school at Oxford University, her symptoms were so severe--including full-blown psychotic episodes and suicidal fantasies--that she was hospitalized. Through Oxford, law school at Yale, and a move to Los Angeles to work in the law school of the University of California, Saks struggled mightily to balance her ambitions with her illness, which was eventually diagnosed as schizophrenia. Never wanting to concede to her mental illness, Saks founds calm and comfort in a rigorous work routine. An analyst characterized her as having three lives: as Elyn, as Professor Saks, and as the Lady of the Charts mental patient. As Saks battled to get off medication and leave behind the Lady of the Charts, she fought for the rights of mental patients, and came to terms with her own limitations.--Bush, Vanessa Copyright 2007 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this engrossing memoir, Saks, a professor of law and psychiatry at the University of Southern California, demonstrates a novelist's skill of creating character, dialogue and suspense. From her extraordinary perspective as both expert and sufferer (diagnosis: Chronic paranoid schizophrenia with acute exacerbation; prognosis: Grave), Saks carries the reader from the early little quirks to the full blown falling apart, flying apart, exploding psychosis. Schizophrenia rolls in like a slow fog, as Saks shows, becoming imperceptibly thicker as time goes on.- Along the way to stability (treatment, not cure), Saks is treated with a pharmacopeia of drugs and by a chorus of therapists. In her jargon-free style, she describes the workings of the drugs (getting med-free, a constant motif) and the ideas of the therapists and physicians (psychologist, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, cardiologist, endocrinologist). Her personal experience of a world in which she is both frightened and frightening is graphically drawn and leads directly to her advocacy of mental patients' civil rights as they confront compulsory medication, civil commitment, the abuse of restraints and the absurdities of the mental care system. She is a strong proponent of talk therapy (While medication had kept me alive, it had been psychoanalysis that helped me find a life worth living). This is heavy reading, but Saks's account will certainly stand out in its field. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
A professor of psychiatry and law, Saks experienced her first episode of schizophrenia at age eight, but her coping skills effectively masked her illness until she attended Oxford University. Because of her knowledge as both patient and psychiatrist, her descriptions are painful yet insightful. The author was hospitalized, restrained, and forced to take medication, leading her to become an advocate for mental patients' civil rights. She movingly reports one doctor's claim that "patients don't feel the restraints like we do." With amazing resilience, she copes with other major physical illnesses while helping friends and students face their own challenges. Best of all, she meets a truly perfect man, Will, whom she marries. Saks brilliantly tells her story as if it were well-written fiction; listeners are with her as she overcomes tremendous obstacles. Narrator Alma Cuervo illustrates Saks's extreme emotion and sudden shifts perfectly; she makes an exceptional book even better. This future classic belongs in all library collections.-Susan G. Baird, Chicago (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Anecdotal trek through the life of the accomplished author, a victim of mental illness. Saks (Law/USC and Psychiatry/UC San Diego) grew up in Miami during the1950s. The daughter of high-achieving upper-middle-class Jews, she pushed herself from an early age to excel academically. At eight, she began to develop "little quirks," ranging from obsessive-compulsive tics like lining up all her shoes to night terrors and an eating disorder. When a high-school junior, she confessed to having tried pot, and her parents whisked her off to a drug-addiction treatment center. It was the first of what would prove to be many institutionalizations. Attending Vanderbilt University, she was plagued by alarming symptoms--sleeplessness, frantic behavior, hysterical laughter--that got worse in the late 1970s while she was on a fellowship at Oxford. Hospitalized there several times, she started taking antidepressants and seeing a Kleinian psychoanalyst she calls Mrs. Jones; for four years they worked through her delusional states while Saks got through her studies. (Transcriptions of some of these aggressive sessions are among the book's few intriguing passages.) At Yale Law School, a full-blown psychotic episode landed her in New Haven Hospital's Psychiatric Evaluation Unit, where she was finally diagnosed as a chronic paranoid schizophrenic. After weeks of heavy medication and therapy, she returned to finish law school. Various attempts to wean herself from medication had disastrous effects. She moved to a teaching job in Los Angeles and found a new analyst, Dr. Kaplan, who eventually gave her an ultimatum: Cease the psychotic babbling and plan your life. She did. Saks's is a success story: She maintained friendships, romance, job security and even her (physical) health despite crippling setbacks. Unfortunately, she spends more time on the history of institutionalization and treatment than she does on the emotional and psychological details that would rescue her account from tedium. Worthy, but often a snooze. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
