Author Guide · Memoir and Mental Health Law
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In the autumn of 1982, in her first months at Yale Law School, Elyn Saks was taken to a psychiatric hospital and held in restraints on a bed for about 30 hours. She went on to graduate, to join the law faculty of the University of Southern California in 1989, and to write about the law of forced psychiatric treatment from the inside. In 2007 she published The Center Cannot Hold, a memoir in which she made public that she has schizophrenia; Time named it one of the ten best non-fiction books of the year, and two years later she received a MacArthur Fellowship. Her other books are scholarly works on criminal responsibility, psychoanalysis and patients’ rights. This guide covers her five key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 5 key books · 1997–2013 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Elyn R. Saks has written five books: Jekyll on Trial (1997, with Stephen H. Behnke), Interpreting Interpretation (1999), Refusing Care (2002), The Center Cannot Hold (2007) and Informed Consent to Psychoanalysis (2013, with Shahrokh Golshan). Start with The Center Cannot Hold, her memoir; read on for which of the academic books follows from it.
Where to Start with Elyn R. Saks
If you want her own story
→ The Center Cannot Hold (2007) — the 2007 memoir of her life with schizophrenia.
If you want her argument about forced treatment
→ Refusing Care (2002) — the legal case behind the memoir.
If you want criminal law and the mind
→ Jekyll on Trial (1997) — multiple personality disorder in the courtroom.
If you want psychoanalysis from a legal angle
→ Informed Consent to Psychoanalysis (2013).
5 Elyn R. Saks Books, in Order
Jekyll on Trial
Her first book, published by New York University Press, asks how criminal law should treat a defendant with multiple personality disorder (now called dissociative identity disorder) when the crime was committed by one alter. It works through questions of personhood and responsibility: who is on trial, and whether punishing one body punishes alters who did nothing.
Interpreting Interpretation
Published by Yale University Press, this is a philosophical critique of hermeneutic theories of psychoanalysis, which treat analysis as the interpretation of meaning and narrative rather than a search for causes. Saks, who later trained in psychoanalysis herself, sets out where she thinks those theories fall short.
Refusing Care
Published by the University of Chicago Press, this book examines when the state may hospitalise, restrain or medicate people with mental illness against their will, and how to weigh a patient’s autonomy against their welfare. It is the scholarly counterpart to the memoir: the restraints and forced medication she describes in The Center Cannot Hold are the practices it analyses.
The Center Cannot Hold
Saks tells her life from a childhood in Miami through her first hospitalisation as a Marshall Scholar at Oxford, the restraints and forced medication at Yale–New Haven Hospital, years of psychoanalysis and antipsychotic medication, and her career as a law professor and marriage to Will Vinet. The title comes from Yeats’s “The Second Coming”. Time named it one of the ten best non-fiction books of 2007. The British edition, from Virago, is titled The Centre Cannot Hold: A Memoir of My Schizophrenia.
Informed Consent to Psychoanalysis
Published by Fordham University Press, this book asks what patients should be told before they begin psychoanalysis, which is long and open-ended and has uncertain outcomes. Saks and Golshan combine the legal doctrine of informed consent with theory and with survey data from practising analysts.
In What Order to Read Elyn R. Saks
Her books do not depend on one another, and four of the five are academic works written for lawyers, psychiatrists and analysts. Most readers come to her through the memoir, and that is the right place to start: it explains why the questions in the other books matter to her.
After the memoir, Refusing Care is the natural next step, because it turns the experiences she describes, restraint and forced medication, into a legal argument. Jekyll on Trial, Interpreting Interpretation and Informed Consent to Psychoanalysis are for readers with a specific interest in criminal law or psychoanalysis.
A reading path
1. The Center Cannot Hold (2007)
2. Refusing Care (2002)
3. Jekyll on Trial (1997)
4. Informed Consent to Psychoanalysis (2013)
5. Interpreting Interpretation (1999)
The years · 1955–2012
Quick facts about Elyn R. Saks
- Known for
- Writing on mental health law as a scholar who made her own schizophrenia public in her 2007 memoir
- 1955
- Born; grows up in Miami
- 1977
- Graduates from Vanderbilt; Marshall Scholar at Oxford
- 1989
- Joins the USC law faculty
- 2012
- TED talk at TEDGlobal
- Born
- 1955; grew up in Miami, Florida
- Education
- Vanderbilt (BA, 1977, first in her class); Oxford (MLitt, 1981, as a Marshall Scholar); Yale Law School (JD, 1986)
- Position
- Orrin B. Evans Distinguished Professor of Law, Psychology, and Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences, USC Gould School of Law
- Psychoanalysis
- PhD in psychoanalytic science, New Center for Psychoanalysis
- Honours
- MacArthur Fellowship (2009)
- Institute
- Founded the Saks Institute for Mental Health Law, Policy, and Ethics at USC in 2010, with her MacArthur money
The red mark is 2007: The Center Cannot Hold, the memoir in which she made her schizophrenia public.
How Elyn R. Saks Writes: The Lawyer and the Patient
Saks writes from two positions at once. In her academic books she is a legal scholar setting out arguments about responsibility, consent and coercion; in her memoir she is the person those arguments are about. Refusing Care (2002) analyses forced treatment, and five years later The Center Cannot Hold describes being strapped to a bed at Yale–New Haven Hospital and force-fed an antipsychotic.
The memoir records psychosis in plain, specific detail: the thoughts and hallucinations she had had since childhood, the breakdowns at Oxford and Yale, and her attempts to come off medication, which ended in relapse. In interviews she has said that she accepted in her forties that she would need treatment for the rest of her life, and that she credits both medication and psychoanalysis.
Her academic books share one concern: how law should treat people whose minds work differently, whether a defendant with multiple personality disorder, a psychiatric patient who refuses medication, or someone starting psychoanalysis. They are written for specialists, with careful definitions and long arguments, and they are where the memoir’s questions are worked out in full.
Watch
Elyn Saks: A Tale of Mental Illness
Legal scholar Elyn Saks gives a TED talk about living with schizophrenia and asks audiences to see people with mental illness clearly and with compassion. Posted in 2012. From the official TED channel.
Frequently asked questions about Elyn R. Saks’s books
How many books has Elyn R. Saks written?
Five: Jekyll on Trial (1997, with Stephen H. Behnke), Interpreting Interpretation (1999), Refusing Care (2002), The Center Cannot Hold (2007) and Informed Consent to Psychoanalysis (2013, with Shahrokh Golshan). She has also published many articles in law and psychiatry journals.
What are Elyn R. Saks’s books in order?
Jekyll on Trial (1997), Interpreting Interpretation (1999), Refusing Care (2002), The Center Cannot Hold (2007) and Informed Consent to Psychoanalysis (2013).
Where should I start with Elyn R. Saks?
With The Center Cannot Hold (2007), her memoir and her only book written for a general audience. If it leaves you wanting her legal argument about forced treatment, read Refusing Care (2002) next.
What is Elyn R. Saks’s most famous book?
The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness (2007), which Time named one of the ten best non-fiction books of 2007. In the UK it was published by Virago as The Centre Cannot Hold: A Memoir of My Schizophrenia.
Does Elyn Saks have schizophrenia?
Yes, as she has written and said publicly. In The Center Cannot Hold she describes symptoms since childhood, her first hospitalisation while at Oxford, and later breakdowns, including at Yale Law School. She has said she manages the illness with antipsychotic medication and psychoanalysis, and that she will need treatment for life.
Where does the title The Center Cannot Hold come from?
From W. B. Yeats’s poem “The Second Coming” (“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”). The American edition uses the spelling Center, the British edition Centre.
Did Elyn Saks win a MacArthur grant?
Yes. She received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2009 and used the money to found the Saks Institute for Mental Health Law, Policy, and Ethics at the University of Southern California in 2010.
Has Elyn Saks given a TED talk?
Yes. “A tale of mental illness — from the inside”, given at TEDGlobal in June 2012, in which she asks the audience to see people with mental illness clearly and with compassion. It is on the TED website.
Where does Elyn Saks teach?
At the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, which she joined in 1989. She is the Orrin B. Evans Distinguished Professor of Law, Psychology, and Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences, and has also been an adjunct professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego.
Is Elyn Saks married?
Yes, to Will Vinet, a law librarian at the University of Southern California, who appears in The Center Cannot Hold.
Footnotes
- Elyn Saks — USC Gould School of Law faculty profile
- USC law professor battles schizophrenia — USC Gould, 2007
- Infiltrating the Enemy of the Mind — The New York Review of Books, 2008
- Long day’s journey into night — Vanderbilt News, 2008
- Saks, Elyn R. 1955- — Encyclopedia.com
- A tale of mental illness — from the inside — TED, 2012
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Ironically, the more I accepted I had a mental illness, the less the illness defined me.”
— Elyn R. Saks, interview with USC Gould School of Law (2007)
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