Susanna Kaysen's Girl Interrupted

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.

The short documentary Crooked Beauty, directed by Ken Paul Rosenthal, narrates Jacks Ashley McNamara’s experience in a psychiatric ward and how her time in the facility shapes her new appreciation for her mental illness. One controversial issue has been trying to identify the true cause of mental illness. On the one hand, most people may think mental illness is simply a biological disorder that can be cured with a combination of medication and doctors demanding appropriate behavior until it sticks in the patient’s mind. On the other, McNamara contends that mental illness is a misconception with a patient’s oversensitivity, where it is harder for the patient to ignore certain events than “normal” people, and their doctor’s textbook knowledge. In McNamara’s mental institution, the psychiatrists simply trap her in a padded room and prescribe many different pills to suppress her mental illness instead of embracing her differences or showing her how to use those differences to her advantage. In attempt to prevent those who are mentally ill from feeling the same anger and frustration she felt, she demands a change in the line psychiatric treatment when she says:

Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted: Telling Susanna’s journey through therapy and being sent to McLean Hospital when she wasn’t sure if she needed the help or not. She meets new people, and goes through many new experiences. Susanna thought at first that she was wrongly admitted to the hospital, then ends up not wanting to go back into the world unprotected.

In the late 19th century, many women were diagnosed with insanity, dementia, and other mental disorders. Although a large portion of these diagnoses were accurate, many of the female patients were mishandled and given the wrong prescriptions. Some treatments included locking patients in an empty room and forcing them to take medicine that either had no effect, or exacerbated the situation. “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, demonstrates this corruption and goes into detail on how a female patient’s lack of power and control is detrimental to her mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing.

The novel “Girl, interrupted” by Susanna Kaysen, it is based on Kaysen’s two year stay at McLean Hospital; the mental institute which she was sent to in 1967. She was sent to Mclean’s for psychiatric treatment for depression and borderline personality disorder (BPD). [1]

I recently read the insightful memoir Girl, Interrupted written by Susanna Kaysen and it brought me into the world of mental illness. Susanna was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and she describes her thinking process and how her mind works. She explained how one of her thoughts could change into something else entirely. One part of her saw and thought about reality, but the other part of her saw imaginary things that her reality side had to compete against. It displays the fine line between the sane and the insane.

Entering the taboo world of mental illness, stigmatized as the crazy and psychotic by decades of

Burke, a critical analyzer of the novel, characterized this by the act of “drama”. “Specifically, dramatism focuses on how we use language and create both real-life and fictional narratives ‘to present a particular view of a situation, just as a play creates and presents a certain world or situation inhabited by characters in the play” (Rutten, 2012). Through the act of dramatism, the interactions in the novel are shaped. This act of dramatizing insanity separates the social spheres of the “normal” and the “insane” creating a social distinction between the two parties. They are perceived differently and immediately receive a warning label when they are viewed as “insane”. Humans form this stereotype through our adjusted, fixed attitudes towards people who are “disabled”. Rutten states “A rhetorical perspective (on the word “disabled”) essentially enables an understanding of the complexity of ‘impairment’ and ‘disability’ as a cultural/discursive as well as a social and structural phenomenon” (Rutten, 2012). This shows how society tends to suppress those who have mental illnesses and ignore them. They are locked away in a mental institution, shielded from the public eye.

This cultural force influenced her work as muckraking journalism broke through as a mainstream genre. One of Bly’s most well known works, Ten Days in a Mad-House, documents Bly’s experience in a mental health institution as a sane person faking insanity. Through this account, the journalist sheds light on the mistreatment of patients, cruelty of staff, and inability for patients to prove their sanity with a focus on the women of the institution. At the end of Bly’s expose is a call to action with the hopeful implication that the problems she has witnessed could be easily fixed if they are addressed. This optimistic sentiment is congruent with the empowered nature of late nineteenth century reformers who organized for large-scale policy change.

Psychoanalysts’ understand human personality through behaviors by looking into experiences, including the origin of emotions, thoughts and behaviors. Through the analysis of the movie Girl, Interrupted, the main character Susanna acts in all sorts of manners, ranging from being unreasonable, frightened, happy, sad, or disturbed due to the varieties of her behaviors. In accordance with DSM V, the movie Girl, Interrupted explores the memoir of a young woman through her struggles with mental health during her stay in a Claymoore psychiatric institution during the 1960’s. "Maybe I really was crazy. Maybe it was the 60's.

Mental illness has always had a stigma attached to it because of the fact that it can be easily unnoticed. Since disorders such as depression, anxiety and severe stress cannot be cured physically for an individual, it is easier to ignore someone in mental distress, rather than someone with a broken leg. Many factors can play a role as to why an individual’s mental condition is overlooked, ranging from oppression to lack of resources. The dominance, mistreatment and gender inequality the narrator endured in Charlotte Perkins’ The Yellow Wallpaper demonstrates how easily mental health can be disregarded and ignored.

“Sometimes the characters are not clinically insane but labeled such because that character does not follow the rules established by society, as seen in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Women were often “diagnosed” with mental illness labels because they did not follow the accepted gender role that society has defined.”

This scene is important because those with mental illnesses often have warped images of themselves, focussing on and emphasising their negative attributes (Mind, n.d.). Tix reminds Rae – and the audience – that our perceptions of ourselves are rarely correct, and rarely how others see us. As common depictions of women with mental illness come from crime shows, which rely on women with mental illness as plot devices, perpetrators, and victims, this is an exchange that is both uncommon and important for viewers to see. In Hysterical, I created Annica to be a caring, understanding confidant for Polly.

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:

Joan Busfield’s article also inspired this dissertation’s research concerning the gender anxiety of nineteenth-century mental illness. Busfield argued there was not a clear difference between women and men being admitted to the asylums based on ground of insanity. I found this interesting considering there was a social anxiety that women were committed