The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions

Michael tells his Yale classmates that he has a disability without specifying that it is schizophrenia. Consequently, they help him by taking notes, reading to him, and typing his work. At the same time, fellow students seem to accept that Michael is a genius.

Jane Ferber’s psychologist friend Bonnie is the only member of the Network who doubts that Yale will be good for Michael. From her experience of working with schizophrenic patients, Bonnie knows that even positive change can cause health setbacks. She contacts Bo Burt, an old friend and Yale law professor, telling him that Yale Law School needs to be the equivalent of a “day hospital” for Michael.

Michael is invited to Yale earlier than other students to settle in. However, when he arrives, there is no bed in his room. Michael becomes agitated, and Chuck is unable to calm him down. Hearing what has occurred, Guido Calabresi and the assistant dean, Steve Yandle, carry a bed into Michael’s room. Guido tells Michael that there are many students with disabilities at Yale for whom they have made ramps. Guido pledges that he and Steve will act as Michael’s “invisible ramp.”

Every morning, Michael hallucinates that his bed is on fire until his father calls to talk him out of his hallucination. Although Michael conceals his schizophrenia from his classmates, he speaks in detail to the dean and his professors about his illness. Several of the professors are like father figures to Michael. Joe Goldstein specializes in psychiatry and the law and suggests Michael could clerk for a Supreme Court justice. Meanwhile, despite his slow reading and writing, Owen Fliss hires Michael as his research assistant. Bo Burt admires and supports Michael while also recognizing his mental impairments are incompatible with becoming a lawyer. He anticipates that Michael will become an advocate for those with mental illnesses.

Three years earlier, Professor Joe Goldstein taught another student with schizophrenia: Elyn Saks. Elyn was diagnosed in her first year at law school after dancing onto the roof of the college. After getting her law degree, Elyn became a professor at the University of Southern California. Years later, she wrote The Center Cannot Hold—a memoir charting her slow acceptance of her illness and need for medication. While at Yale, Elyn stopped taking her medication after her work was deemed “publishable.” She mistook her academic success as a sign that she was no longer ill.

The author points out that intelligence is equated with worth in American society. This ideology was underlined by the case of Carrie Buck in 1927. The Supreme Court upheld a decision to forcibly sterilize Ms. Buck due to an assessment of her as “feebleminded.”

After Michael tells select students about his illness, his classmates regularly check on his welfare. When summer break arrives, Michael moves in with his old friend, Linus Yamane. Some days, Michael does not emerge from his room, and on one occasion, he believes that Linus plans to eat him. Michael spends his time researching the 1970 case of Goldberg v. Kelly—a landmark case in disability rights.

Linus is friends with Caroline Costello (Carrie), the roommate of Michael’s former girlfriend, Robin. The daughter of Irish Catholics, Carrie is an IBM systems engineer. Linus is concerned when Michael and Carrie start dating, as he understands the extent of Michael’s illness. When Michael tells Carrie he has schizophrenia, she reacts with compassion.

In this chapter, the author outlines the legal system’s struggle to find a fair and effective way of dealing with people with mental illnesses who commit crimes. In 1954, Judge David L. Bazelon introduced the insanity defense with his Durham ruling. Psychiatrists began to take an active role in court proceedings, explaining why defendants with mental illness could not be held responsible for their criminal actions. The Durham ruling encouraged a liberal interpretation of mental illness, taking into account how social and cultural factors such as poverty or oppression could contribute to criminal behavior. Bazelon hoped that offenders with mental illness would be rehabilitated in hospitals rather than criminalized. He did not anticipate that his ruling would lead to many defendants being indefinitely incarcerated in state hospitals rather than receiving short jail sentences.

In 1970, Joe Goldstein called for the abolition of the insanity defense due to the long-term incarceration of so many patients. However, idealistic attempts to liberate people with psychiatric diseases from institutions often had unintended consequences. In her memoir The Center Cannot Hold, Elyn Saks recalls how her Yale law school class celebrated when a student advocate secured the release of a patient from the hospital to his family home. When the patient burned down his family’s trailer home, killing his parents and young brother, Elyn’s class was devastated.

By his late twenties, Jonathan has left graduate school and is working for a newspaper. He has also written a novel and is engaged to Mychal. Meanwhile, Michael is undertaking a corporate associateship during the summer, arranged by Owen Fliss. However, Michael becomes angry and abusive when his employers refuse his request for a private office. The firm continues to pay Michael but gives him no work. Michael wants to bring a case against the company under the Americans with Disabilities Act. However, Bo Burt advises him he would be unlikely to win. Bo is secretly surprised that Owen Fliss thought Michael was capable of the job.

When Bill Clinton is elected, Yale Law school receives favorable publicity as the place where the president and First Lady fell in love. Guido is nominated to the US Court of Appeals. Michael misses his mentor and often visits him in his court office. On one occasion, Michael reveals he woke up believing Guido was the devil but reasoned himself out of the delusion. Guido’s daughter, Nina, is training to be a psychiatrist. She is alarmed by her father’s descriptions of Michael’s delusions but fails to convince him to take his symptoms more seriously.

The assistant dean, Steve Yandle, supports Michael in his goal to become a legal academic. The law school creates a two-year post-doctoral associate role for Michael. During this time, he writes articles arguing for disability laws that create an environment of “nurturing inclusiveness.” Michael also talks to students about the law and disability. He tells Jonathan he hopes to marry Carrie and have a family.

Michael wants to see changes to the Americans with Disabilities Act regarding the definition of “reasonable accommodations” for disabled employees. He believes employers should not be able to argue that the accommodations required are too complex or expensive. Jonathan marries Mychal, who is training to be a hospital chaplain.

When his postgraduate associate position ends, Michael is advised not to reveal his schizophrenia to potential employers. Nevertheless, his applications for academic law jobs are unsuccessful. He volunteers at a center supporting people with disabilities and again applies for jobs, this time revealing his mental illness. He is still unsuccessful. Meanwhile, Carrie is busy working for the Edison Project, which aims to transform the public-school education system by providing free computers to every family.

Chuck Laudor dies of prostate cancer. Myrna, a member of the Network, is alarmed by Michael’s behavior at the funeral. At one point, he gives a detailed account of his parents’ sex life.