Girl Interrupted Summary

The film “Girl, Interrupted” is a true story adapted from the original memoir by Susanna Kaysen. Set in the 1960s, it relates her experiences during her stay in a mental institution after being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder following a suicide attempt. Many films include characters with a mental illness; the actors who play these characters have the immense challenge of staying true to the illness they portray.

Susanna Kaysen’s “Girl Interrupted,” is an autobiography in relation to Kaysen’s two-year stay at a mental hospital as she battles borderline personality disorder. Although in denial, Susanna Kaysen is diagnosed with borderline personality disorder but is unable to come to terms with her illness as she reassures herself she is fine. The reader learns that Kaysen is an unreliable narrator that is unable to discover the truth behind her illness. Through the exploration of her relationships, actions, and opinions, enhances the fact that Kaysen is mentally ill. Through her past and present relationship’s, Susanna demonstrates her self-destructive tendencies. Kaysen’s impulsivity in the novel is another indication that her diagnosis is fitting. Finally, Kaysen’s thought process and anxious behavior further prove her as a candidate for BPD.

Revealing truths that the younger characters couldn’t imagine .Or as The Inspector puts it to the Birlings ‘putting ourselves in the place of these women in their dingy back rooms’ which possibly demonstrates that the inspector thinks that the Birling Family could n cope with the conditions that these young women live in.

In the book Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen, Susanna Kaysen was only 18 years old when she agreed to enter a medium security psychiatric facility in Boston, McLean hospital in April 1967, after a failed suicide attempt. She insisted that her over dose on aspirin was not a suicide attempt, but after a 20 minute interview the doctor decided she needed to be admitted to a hospital. During her prolonged two-year stay at the hospital Kaysen describes the issues that most of the patients in her ward have to deal with and how they all differently deal with the amount of time they must stay in the hospital for. While in the hospital Kaysen experienced a case of depersonalization where she tried to pull the skin of her hands to see if there were bones underneath, after a failed escape attempt. Soon, after going to therapy and analysis she was labeled as having recovered from borderline personality disorder. After her release she realizes that McLean Hospital provided patients with more freedom than the outside world, by being free responsibility of parental pressure, free from school and job responsibilities, and being free from the “social norms” that society comes up with. Ultimately, being in captivity gave the patients more freedom then in society and created a safe environment in which patients wanted to stay in.

Poverty and hardship are shown to create vulnerability in female characters, particularly the female servants, allowing powerful men to manipulate and sexually abuse them. Kent illustrates how poverty perpetuates maltreatment and abuse in a society like Burial Rites using the characters of Agnes’ mother Ingveldur and Agnes. Agnes’ mother is forced to make invidious choices as her children are “lugged along” from farm to farm, where she is sexually exploited by her employers. In spite of these circumstances, Agnes’ mother is commonly referred to as a whore in their society which abhors female promiscuity yet disregards male promiscuity as a harmless character trait; as in the case of Natan, who is merely “indiscreet” despite all his philandering. Born into poverty, Agnes experiences similar sexual coercion and manipulation from her “masters” and yet is labelled “a woman who is loose with her emotions and looser with her morals”. The severe poverty of Agnes is explicitly demonstrated to the reader by Kent through the intertextual reference of her entire belongings - a very dismal, piteous list to be “sold if a decent offer is presented”. Furthermore, Kent contrasts the situation of Agnes, a “landless workmaid raised on a porridge of moss and poverty”, to the comparative security Steina has experienced using a rhetorical question from

In the movie Girl, Interrupted the plot surrounds a period in the life of Susanna Kaysen played by Winona Ryder who was institutionalized at the Claymore mental hospital in the 1960s. In the movie, the main character Susanna is diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and undergoes treatment to which at the end of the movie she is released. It is at this hospital that Susanna encounters many other patients of which she shares many experiences with. One of these patients was the longtime resident and popular amongst all the other patients Lisa Rowe played by Angelina Jolie whom Susanna became close with and would mid-movie escape the hospital with to only return on her own and find that Lisa would be back a few days later. Lisa, while being the protagonist of the movie, was very charismatic in her own way and based on her behavior and revelation in the movie is diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, particularly a sociopath in the movie.

While at the hospital, she had flashbacks of the whole ordeal, and her professor asking her to have sex with him again. She also had sex with a guy name Toby. She met Toby at a party and they had sex the same night. Than one day when Toby came to visit Susanna at the hospital, they had sex and then she tried to have sex with a guy name John who works at the hospital. At times she felt guilty and regretful. At the hospital she met a girl name Lisa who was a sociopath. Lisa was a trouble maker, on numerous occasions she escaped and came back. So one time Lisa and Susanna decided to escape and met a girl name Daisy, who was a former patient at the hospital. While at Daisy’s place, Lisa was blunt about what she thought of Daisy, which caused Daisy to commit suicide. Susanna felt, she could have possibly saved Daisy’s life, if she had stopped Lisa from criticizing Daisy’s way of living. She tried to blame her self for the Daisy’s death.

In this essay, I will explain a cultural object from a scene from the movie Girls Trip, which was released on July 21, 2017. Girls Trip is about four women by the name of Ryan Pierce (Regina Hall), Sasha Franklin (Queen Latifah), Lisa Cooper (Jada Pinkett Smith), and Dina (Tiffany Radish), who have been friends for over 10 years, and are traveling to the annual Essence Festival in New Orleans, Louisiana. The cultural subject is Ryan Piece assistant Elizabeth Davelli, who uses terms and body language to define “blackness”. To reinforce and challenge the discourse that is taking place is people of color have to speak up about the discourse and inform people who are not of color, to show how people of color are offended by those actions.

In this world, there are two sides to everything. Whether it may be a message, a film or a novel, each platform of literature has two different windows. The first being the depiction of the author and the second being the interpretation of the audience. This concept is evident within both works this essay seeks to explore. In Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over a Cuckoo’s Nest, a charismatic criminal, Randle P. McMurphy is admitted to a state asylum due to his will of serving out of prison sentence in a mental hospital rather than the penitentiary. McMurphy brings in the outside world to the admitted patients after being legally declared insane through a condensed interview with a psychiatrist. He symbolizes freedom, life and the power of an

At the end of the movie the two girls make peace and Susanna leaves wanting an eventual full recovery for Lisa. This serves as the best example of “a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation”.(2)

Moreover, Mary evolves that story and explains to her grandmother, Mrs. Tilford, that she saw the two women kissing through the keyhole in the door. Mary knew the power that her grandmother had over the school. Mrs. Tilford is one of the main financial contributors to the school. She is also a wealthy, influential older woman who is well respected throughout the town. But, because of her adolescence, Mary did not know the underlying effects of telling the lie to such a powerful person within the community. Mary does not realize that her actions have given Mrs. Tilford the power to ruin the school, the women’s reputations, and most importantly their lives. Although Karen and Martha never committed the act they were accused of, the lie spreads all over the town and ultimately results in the closing of the school and ruining their lives.

Girl, Interrupted provides an in-depth look into Susanna Kaysen’s experience of living with a mental illness and staying in a mental hospital. Twenty-five years after she leaves McLean she learns of her diagnosis of borderline personality disorder and discusses it in her memoir. Kaysen reads about her disorder from the DSM-III-R and views her diagnosis as:

The film Girl, Interrupted focused on an eighteen year old girl by the name Susanna that was admitted into a private mental hospital after being accused of a suicidal attempt. The movie follows Susanna on her journey in the institution as she encounters women with different admittance stories. The one who intrigues Susanna the most is Lisa. Lisa is thought to be a sociopath with the way she manipulates those around her to get her way. She is constantly in and out of the institution causing those around to fear, yet admire her. My main focus will be on Lisa and although it was not specified in the film just how old she is, she seemed to be around the same age group as Susanna. This means that, according to Erikson’s Psychosocial Stages, she is on stage five or six. Stage five happens during adolescence where ones primary task is their identity versus their own role in society whereas stage six happens in young adulthood and one faces intimacy versus isolation. The article incorporated gives more insight on how Erikson’s stages play hand in hand with one another and can potentially affect the mental state of someone if not successfully fulfilled. There is also a possibility that, with the ‘symptoms’ of a sociopath, Lisa could have had past problems during what Sigmund Freud considered the anal stage of her childhood.

Susana Kaysen is a fictional character in the movie, Girl, Interrupted. She is an 18 year old young adult, who suffers from mental illness. Susana had multiple behaviors that can be defined as abnormal. Susana’s behaviors can be grouped into four categories. The first one is deviance, which is defined by behaviors that differ from society’s norms. Susana was known to be promiscuous and have multiple sexual relationships. One sexual relationship she had was with an older man, and it happened to be a teacher. Another behavior that can be seen as deviance is her unwanted desire to attend college. At her age and in the time of the movie, it was an expectation to attend college and receive a degree. However, Susana did not want to attend a university. Another deviant behavior is Susana’s substance abuse problem with alcohol, cigarettes, and pills. Susana also displayed deviance by not following the rules in the ward. She would not take her medication and she would sneak out. At one point she even escaped for several days. These deviant behaviors were Susana’s ways of acting out.

The movie, Girl, Interrupted, displays Susanna Kaysen’s eighteen-month stay at a mental institute in the 1960s. This film was an adaptation of a book based on a true story of the main character and author Susanna Kaysen. Susanna was checked into Claymore, a psychiatric hospital in Massachusetts, after chasing a bottle of aspirin with a bottle of vodka. At first, Susanna denies this blatant attempt at suicide and constantly struggles with uncertainty of her thoughts and emotions. Although Girl, Interrupted exhibits several mental disorders one of the most prevalent disorder of this film is Susanna’s Borderline Personality Disorder. This film depicts majority of the signs and symptoms of a person with Borderline Personality. As stated in the textbook, “the lives of persons with borderline personality are marked by instability. Their relationships are unstable, their behavior is unstable, their emotions are unstable, and even their images of themselves are unstable” (Larsen and Buss 593). Susanna’s romantic relationships are extremely unstable and she frequently engages in casual sex. She jumps from one guy to another in a matter of few weeks. One scene that establishes this the most is when her boyfriend at the time comes to visit her at Claymore and expresses his true feelings for her and she instantly withdraws. He asked her to go to Canada with him and she turns him down immediately. She also kisses Lisa who she befriends at the mental institute, displaying a switch of