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Is There No Place on Earth for Me?

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"Is There No Place on Earth For Me" is a telling tale of the life of a Schizophrenic. Sheehan goes inside the mind of the character to explore the inner workings and provide detailed accounts of what life is like for someone suffering with Schizophrenia and the hell their life can become. Sheehan at one point, even slept in the bed next to her character in the mental institution. This act assures not only a detailed account, but also an accurate one. Sheehan reinforces the old saying...Don't knock Charlie till you walked a mile in his shoes! This book takes you through many miles in a Schizophrenics shoes. It extricates vivid details of the inner mind and its workings. This is a book you will never forget. After reading this story, you will never look at mental illness in the same light again.

A Pulitzer Prize-winner for General Nonfiction, this is an account of the tragic life of one "Sylvia Frumkin" (a fictitious name), who succumbed to schizophrenia while still an adolescent and spent the next two decades in and out of mental hospitals.

The author (who lived with Frumkin for a time) never appears "on stage" in the book, and restricts herself to just-the-facts third-person narration. A certain moral outrage is evident nonetheless. The mental health industry does not come off well at all (Frumkin's institution is unfavorably compared to the one depicted in "One Flew Over a Cuckoo's Nest"). It's difficult not to come away with the impression that a little less bureaucratic negligence might have saved Miss Frumkin many wasted years. Fortunately, this is not a one-sided screed (not quite, anyhow): some of these medics and bureaucrats are just doing the best they can with the limited resources on hand.

The prose style is plain and straightforward--maybe a little flat-footed, too. But overall, the book is a good example of how facts can speak for themselves.

One way mental illness could be described is multi faceted. Like a prism, the mind refracts information (as a prism does light) into distorted processes during an active phase of psychosis. One can almost imagine the many facets of this illness as it is so individual; "Sylvia Frumkin's" chronic battle with psychosis is told with a touch of humor.

The author follows this actively psychotic woman for a 17 year time frame. Sylvia's first onset with the illness took place in 1964. Mentally distorted and confused, Sylvia's life is spent in and out of hospitals and treatment centers.

As devasting and tragic as mental illness is, the author injects notes of levity into some of Sylvia's more outlandish behavior. This softens the stark reality of Sylvia's illness and offers a lighter side to a very dark illness. It is hard not to smile when Sylvia declares herself to be Paul McCartney's wife. It is also hard not to smile when Sylvia explains in great detail why her delusions are justified and grounded. The incongruity of reality and Sylvia's delusions provide an almost light touch of ironic contrast. This tone is very effective in presenting Sylvia in a very humane and sympathetic light. It also helps readers (and hopefully others) feel affection for, and hope for the "Sylvias" who need a chance and people who genuinely care about them.

Reading this book is like watching a train wreck in progress. You can't take your eyes off of it because you want to know how it all works out. When I was putting together a course on psychology in literature a friend gave me this book but made me promise to return it because it was a favorite of hers. After reading it, I can understand why. The author does a fantastic (although disturbing) job of describing the life of a woman with schizophrenia while also discussing the impact that the woman's illness has on her family. While reading the book the reader often begins to feel the anxiety and frustration experienced by Sylvia, a woman with schizophrenia, and her family, and can see in their mind's eye how the disease unfolds and engulfs their lives.
This is a great text for a student of psychology who is interested in descriptions of the disease and also of historical (1970s) views of the mental health system. It would also be helpful for the family members of a person diagnosed with schizophrenia to read so that they can have a greater understanding of the life of a person affected by the disorder.

Susan Sheehan chronicles the shuffling of Sylvia Frumkin through New York's mental health system. Ms. Frumkin is a very smart schizophrenic, and her monologues had me laughing out loud while reading this book. Sheehan tells Sylvia's story in a very matter-of-fact way, which adds to the humor--yet never detracts from the story's sincerity.

I am a soon to be 16 year old student, studying at an International School in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I am currently enroled in an Abnormal Psychology Class and read this book for one of our final examinations. This book is basically about a young woman by the name of Silvia Fumpkin. Silvia's life is quite dramatic as we follow her through her battle with schizophrenia. From her ups and downs, we see what types of deviant behaviors schizophrenics participate in. From stripping off her clothes, to attempting to swallow an ashtray are scenes we see in this book. Through out the book we also see Silvia being admitted from hospital to hopital and the switch from medication to medication. Due to her illness, she shares the pain of being in a Jewish family and bringing shame on to her family. Her behavior at times is very interesting as you observe how she thinks she's Jesus one minute and Paul Macartney's wife the next minute. Although there are times where you may feel like the pages just seem to go on and on, this book is most definately a good read hence I strongly encourage readers who are interested in schizophrenia to read this book. Not only is it an interesting read but you learn so much about those who suffer from schizophrenia as well as the way society treats or acts towards schizophrenics.

If the investigative reporter Nellie Bly were still alive, she probably would have declared Susan Sheehan to be her comrade-in-arms, journalistically speaking, at least, for so eye-opening is this book, a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1983 in the nonfiction category, that one can't help but somehow feel indirectly involved in this true story in regards to time, place and manner.

By chronicling the schizophrenic oddesy of a single patient, "Sylvia Frumkin", a pseudonym, Susan Sheehan has performed an intimate piece of extraordinary journalism, whereby she brings the reader into the frightening and oftentimes misunderstood world of those possessed by mental illness. With compassionate, intellectual and keen, almost anthropological observation, Sheehan weaves through the blurred and confusing healthcare bureaucracy which "Sylvia Frumkin" and her family incrementally find themselves trying to navigate. Coupled with psychiatric doctors who seem tartly bent on competing against each other in regards to what drug perscriptions are best (and there is a flurry of them), a frazzled family who is so thinly glued together that a feather could crack them apart and "Sylvia Frumkin" herself, whose fragile mental health goes up and down faster than a blinking eye, a reader would want to toss the book aside simply because of the consistent up and down emotional tolls that are flatly patterned in each passing chapter. Yet, as each chapter occurs, it also provides a clean slate and or a new beginning where the illness can be kept at bay and "Sylvia Frumkin" can finally have the good normal life that she deserves. However, it is the rare bouts of normalcy that are fleeting and therein is where the loss of hope and frustration lie. It is that very fleetingness that is so expertly conveyed in, Is There No Place On Earth For Me?

Sheehan's book is one of those rare type of books, not simply because of its high journalistic caliber, but because it is one of those works that can actually bring about good, positive change in a very flawed system, and if a system, governmentally, medically and administratively speaking ever needed change, Creedmore Hospital and those of a similar ilk, definitely required serious correction. Sheehan's book was an eye-opening and engrossing read, amd one can only gravely echo Sheehan's own words in the afterword: "I want there to be a decent place for "Sylvia Frumkin"...and for the many thousands of other people like her."

I've read this book twice, as it was assigned for two of my Psychology classes this year. Although it was somewhat interesting as a detailed chronicle of one woman's experience with schizophrenia, the book does not serve as the ideal introduction to this illness, for it neither brings the reader to full comprehension of the illness, nor does it function as a real "story." Susan Sheehan's writing is burdened by her need to provide the reader with all facts and figures, for she was trained as a journalist, so the writing is often dull with irrelevant, boring details. Thus, the book does not move its audience, as do others in the genre of psychological novels/biographies, such as I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. Furthermore, it appears that Sheehan, who became close with Sylvia Frumpkin through the course of her research, often takes overly personal stabs against figures in the book upon whom she places blame. It is clear that she finds Sylvia's parents at fault, as well as one psychiatrist in particular, Dr. Sun. From a psychological standpoint, Sylvia does not have the simplest of cases, either; she often displays qualities that are typical of bipolar illness (manic depression), rather than just schizophrenia. So, although the book is probably an important inclusion if one is aiming to possess a wide knowledge of literature on mental illness, I feel that it is not the ideal book to read if one wants to simply read an interesting story about schizophrenia. I Never Promised You a Rose Garden is a much better read.

When I found this book at the library in 2009, I wasn't expecting anything miraculous or amazing. I had tried to read books on schizophrenia and schizophrenics before, and had been sorely disappointed. What I found surprised me.

Susan Sheehan's tale of the life of one schizophrenic woman in a New York psychiatric hospital is enlightening and heart-breaking. It was amazing. The beauty of the book is that Sheehan seems to be the only person who doesn't judge Sylvia Frumkin (real name: Maxine Mason). Frumkin's decent into madness is chronicled as well in the book as you would imagine it being captured in a film documentary.

It is colorful. It is beautiful. It is probably the most wonderful book that most people have never heard of.

A wonderful book for its time and subject.

But something is missing in that Sheehan did not analyze the effects on her illness of the rejection of and downright hostility shown to by Sylvia by her mother and the absence of her father. Instead she appeared to treat Sylvia's mental state as resulting from a bodily deficiency that drugs could cure.

Those drugs and the quantities given to her almost ensured her early demise. But what seems to have assured her early demise even more was the hostility shown to her by her mother, who seemed to have little regard for Sylvia. Given the treatment by her mother, it is hard NOT to make the case that even if psychological conditions are due to some bodily deficiency, being abused by one's parents certainly cannot help.

"Failure to thrive" is a condition doctors talk about today and relate that failure to the relationship between mothers and their infants. But it seems obvious even then reading the book that this poor child was rejected or ignored by her mother and father.

Even if a medical condition existed that necessitated all those drugs, her mother's acceptance of her could have helped her. All living creatures are more than just a compilation of drugs that, if given in the right combination, put us back on the road to wellville. Otherwise, parents could become more or less superficial.