The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness (38 page)

The next day, Will unexpectedly dropped by my office. In his hand,
he held a beautiful multicolored bird feather. He walked over to my
desk, took a piece of tape, and placed the feather on my computer.
"It's from my parrot," he said, and then he left.

I sat there for a good fifteen minutes, transfixed by the feather. It
was the only decoration in the office—I had no pictures, no drawings,
no attempts at ambience or personal aesthetic; the walls were bare. I'd
never had any decoration in any office I'd ever occupied; I didn't think
I deserved it, it seemed fitting that there be nothing. And now here
was the little feather. It practically glowed.

That night, I was talking on the phone to Kenny, my friend from
Vanderbilt. "Kenny, I have a question. Do you think a guy who plucks
a feather from his bird and gives it to me might actually like me?"

He laughed. "I don't know, Elyn, but one thing for sure—he likes
you better than he likes his bird!"

A week or so later, I received a letter from Will—an actual letter,
handwritten, and illustrated with hand-drawn flowers. He asked if I'd
like to take a day to drive to the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve near
Lancaster, California. The poppies were in their spring bloom, and it
was really beautiful there now. Would I like to go?

"Yes," I said when I called him. "I'd like that very much."

It was beautiful there, and it was wonderful to be off campus for a
day. The flowers were glorious—acres and acres of poppies, in shades
of deep blazing orange, and ivory, and butter yellow. But in spite of
the sunshine overhead, it was chilly; spring was having a slow time
getting started that year. Astonished at myself, I kept dropping hints
that I was cold. I wanted this man's arm around me. I
really
wanted
his arm around me. But it didn't happen.

At the end of the day, as he was dropping me off, Will hesitated a
moment as we were saying good-bye. Then he leaned in and kissed
me. It was a long, lingering kiss. It was great. It was fantastic. It was
even better than getting an article published.

chapter twenty-two

O
NCE, BACK IN
New Haven, White had told me that achieving
tenure frees up academics to do their best work. I hoped he was right,
because there was so much out there I wanted to do, and now I had
the freedom to do it. For the first time in years, I could take a breath,
survey my landscape, and be excited about the future. In fact, I'd
anticipated tenure in the way a teenager looks forward to a
twenty-first birthday: Congratulations, it's official, you're now a
grown-up! So—what's next?

When it came to my personal life, I was nurturing a fragile but
growing hope for a relationship with Will. Our early times together
were tentative and sweet; he was gentle and kind, and more than
anything else, he was fun. In spite of having what I think is a pretty

good sense of humor, I hadn't had much fun since I became ill.
Whenever I was out someplace and heard people laughing together,
I'd turn toward the sound in much the same way a flower turns to the
sun. To laugh, to tease; not to be afraid of saying or doing something
stupid or clumsy, because even if you did, you'd be loved anyway, and
you'd always know it. What might it be like, to be completely at home
in one's life, and not be alone? To walk across campus and see the one
I love coming toward me, and to think,
There he is—that's my person?

I wanted that, and slowly I began to believe that it actually might
happen. I hadn't told Will about myself yet, although I knew I would
have to; in fact, I wanted to. It would be a relief, but I wanted to be
sure of myself when I did it. The question of intimacy was scary to me;
the question of commitment possibly even scarier. I vowed to be
realistic and patient, with both of us. This wasn't going to be simple, I
knew that, but there was no hurry. We agreed to take our time and
figure things out as we went along.

In the meanwhile, Will brought flowers to me at work, and he
made me a cake for my birthday. I'd barely figured out which buttons
to punch on the microwave in my apartment (let alone how the oven
worked), but Will not only knew how to cook, he loved to do it—and
actually produced a homemade coconut cake to celebrate the day I
was born! It was delicious, and I was amazed—how did I luck into
this? I wondered.

And, once again, Will added something sweet to the decor in my
formerly bare office—a snapshot of me from our Lancaster trip,
looking out over a wide field of brilliant orange poppies. He'd even
given it a caption: "Persephone calls forth the flowers of spring to
brighten a winter weary world."

If Steve's friendship had made me feel human, Will was making
me feel like a woman.

The direction of my professional life was changing as well. Everything
up until now had been carefully calculated toward tenure. Most of my
published work concerned the legal status of people with severely
compromised mental states, as I examined the relationship between
mental illness and law in the context of important medical decisions,
like consenting to surgery or refusing psychiatric medications. I was
interested in the ethical dimensions of psychiatric research, and
initially focused on the issue of capacity in that context. In fact, in
collaboration with colleagues at University of California, San Diego,
School of Medicine, I developed an instrument to measure such
capacity, which we then used to study patients with psychosis. (I was
touched and honored when I was offered an adjunct professor of
psychiatry position at the UCSD School of Medicine.) Maybe an
objective critic could have criticized me for tackling subjects too close
to home. On the other hand, who better? I'd been drugged against my
wall, I'd been held in restraints, screaming and pleading to be released.
This wasn't an academic exercise for me; it was about my life.

However, once tenure was safely accomplished, I wondered if
maybe it was time to explore something a little different. I
wondered—if the Career Fairy were to grant me one perfect wish,
what might that be? The answer was immediate and obvious: I wanted
psychoanalytic training.

Freud and his teachings had always fascinated me, even in high
school. For a while in college, I'd even thought of getting
psychoanalytic training. But that was before I got sick. Afterward, I
didn't give it much thought. My yearlong Freud class at Yale resulted
in my article on the Schreber case, so I didn't feel like a complete
novice. I knew I didn't want to change careers—I loved my job at USC
(and I still do, every single day). But when I reflected on the work I'd
already done professionally (and the simultaneous personal journey
I'd been on), it just seemed obvious to me what my next step should

Law is based on a theory of personhood; that is, the concept of
someone who can make choices and suffer consequences, and who
understands the threat of sanction. The doctrine of informed consent
(indeed, most of American political theory) presumes that we are not
just subjects to be directed, but rather autonomous beings capable of
making independent decisions. And for me, psychoanalysis provides
the most interesting route to understanding what that truly means,
because psychoanalysis asks fundamental questions: Why do people
do what they do? When can people be held responsible for their
actions? Is unconscious motivation relevant to responsibility? And
what renders a person
not
capable of making choices?

I wanted to know how and why psychoanalysis had worked for me.
I wanted to know what was in my analysts' minds when they treated
me. I wanted to experience being on the other side of the couch. And if
possible, I wanted to find a way to give back—to use what I'd learned
and experienced, combined with professional training, to perhaps
help someone else the way I'd been helped.

However, I wasn't certain if my illness (no matter how well
controlled) could even allow for such a thing. As time passed, and my
life was less tumultuous, and my work (and relationship) with Kaplan
became more satisfactory, I carefully lifted the idea out of the little
box I'd put it away in so long before, and took another good look at it.
After all, I'd managed to accomplish a lot of things I wasn't supposed
to. Why couldn't psychoanalytic training be one more challenge to add
to that list?

The first time I mentioned the possibility of being admitted to the Los
Angeles Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (LAPSI) to Kaplan, his
response was negative. Out of the question. Perhaps even
inappropriate. Besides, my own history might be cause for rejection,
and we both knew what my emotional response to that rejection might
be. Nevertheless, we just kept talking about it, and slowly Kaplan's
position softened. Maybe...maybe, just maybe, it might work.

Encouraged by his change of attitude, I called LAPSI's director of
admissions, asking if I might meet with him. Fortunately, my
professional credentials kept him on the phone, and he agreed to meet
with me for lunch, where we talked about my prospects for admission
to the program. He asked about my reasons for seeking
psychoanalytic training, about my academic work to date, and about
my experiences with psychoanalytic treatment. He did not, however,
specifically ask about my psychiatric history. Needless to say, in the
absence of the question, I didn't volunteer the information. As we
finished our coffee, he encouraged me to apply and hinted that if I did,
I would likely be admitted.

Up until now, the decision to either disclose or withhold
information about my illness had always been primarily about me
protecting me—that is, not allowing anything to get in the way of
completing my education, doing serious work, and belonging to a
respected profession. I knew full well that the stigma that travels with
mental illness could trip me up one of these days, but I certainly
wasn't going to collaborate in my own "demise" if I could help it. Even
Congress recognized the potential for the damage, when it passed the
Americans with Disabilities Act, which prohibits employers (and
schools) from even asking about a psychiatric history.

Now, however, the issue was more complicated than my own goals
and ambitions. If I had the opportunity to treat patients, would my
illness put them at risk? Would my delusional periods, however brief,
make it difficult for me to know what (and who) was real? Kaplan
suggested that the more important questions were: Did I have the
capacity to know when I was in trouble? Did I have the judgment to
know when I was impaired? And did I have the integrity to take
protective steps? Both Kaplan and I believed that I did.

So, on the application for admission, I dutifully sent up a red flag
that I had psychological problems—referring to a "turbulent period" in
my earlier life that "spurred my interest in issues of mental health." I
decided I would not say anything more unless someone asked. In
other words, although I didn't straight-out lie, I did deliberately
withhold information that someone else might have thought was
vitally important.

Through years of trial and error, I'd learned to manage myself and
the way I appeared to others, as anyone with a chronic illness or
disability attempts to do in order to be out in the world. In any case, I
knew there would probably never be a time when I would not be in
treatment myself, which in and of itself would be an effective fail-safe.
That's not to say the ethical issue was clear-cut; it wasn't. And it isn't.

It's complex, perhaps even controversial, and always will be. But I
have never come to these decisions—to teach, to go to the Institute, to
treat clients—in a vacuum. I discussed the issues involved in my
training extensively with both White and Kaplan.

Happily, LAPSI seemed much more interested in my talents and
training than in my "turbulent period," and in my sixth year in
California, I became a first-year candidate at the Los Angeles
Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. As I prepared to begin training
to become a psychoanalyst, I marveled at the confluence of events that
had brought me here: While medication had kept me alive, it had been
psychoanalysis that had helped me find a life worth living.

We met as a class the night before our classes actually began—a small
group of five people who knew they'd see one another every week for
the next four years (six, for those of us who decided to pursue
doctorates).

Unlike most other big changes in my life, this one came
accompanied by very little stress; I was excited, and completely
certain that it was the right place to be. Happily, I had the support of
my law school colleagues and dean; a few colleagues had even offered
the opinion that what I was doing was "cool." In many ways, I felt like
my whole journey had led me here—between the Institute and USC, I
felt like I now had the best of at least two worlds. In fact, I felt so at
home in that first gathering that I made a quip about how we'd all be
staunch rivals, then quickly said, "Just kidding!"

"Oh, no, you're not!" someone retorted with a laugh, and that was
my introduction to Alicia. (When I relayed this to Kaplan the next day,
he said, "There should be a sign on that door: 'No Smoking and No
Interpretations!'") Now in her seventies, Alicia looks like she's barely
in her fifties—fit, energetic, completely engaged in her life. I love to
hear the story of how her dad gave her boxing gloves when she was
just three, telling her, "Never let anyone take you down!" The word
"feisty" is probably overused these days, but in this case, it fits.

Alicia lost her husband to cancer some months before I met her.
She managed to turn that sorrow into a kind of wisdom about the
human condition—it's no accident that both of her daughters are
physicians and that she's a gifted clinician herself.