Professor of Law and Psychiatry Discusses Her Battle with Schizophrenia, depicted in her recent memoir, The Center Cannot Hold, with a weblogger. As FmH readers know, one of my ongoing concerns in my work as a psychiatrist is the stigma attached to mental illness and how my patients suffer for it. Saks has much to say about that. My curiosity, simply put, is whether she rises above the stigmatization because she is exceptional, or whether she is exceptional because she has somehow managed to rise above the stigmatization. Her story reinforces my impression, from years of working with schizophrenics, that one’s IQ score helps. While intellect is by no means protective against the devastation of a psychotic illness (in some cases, quite the contrary, because of greater insight into what is being lost!), those with the most rehabilitative potential are usually those with the greatest intellectual capacity either premorbidly or at least retained . In Saks’ case, as well, some questions about whether she truly had the devastating disease of schizophrenia arise.