Susanna Kaysen In The Movie, Girl Interrupted

The Quiet Room: A Journey Out of the Torment of Madness is an insightful book which revolves around Lori Schiller, who at age 17 started her downward spiral into psychosis induced by schizophrenia, and subsequently recovering enough by her early thirties to regain control over her life. The book is a culmination of Lori’s experiences and those close to her during her treatment. In her note to the reader, Lori explains that the variation of ‘voices’ in the book is to give an accurate recollection of her life since her illness and subsequent treatment distorted her memories. Lori and her family’s experiences progress in a mostly linear progression from before the schizophrenia appeared with her slowly loosing independence as the schizophrenia began to reign out of control. The experiences in the book revolve around mental hospitals, healthcare workers, as well as societal stigmas from both her family and acquaintances that Lori and her family encountered about mental illnesses.

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.

Because of the imposed judgments placed on Miss Sasagawara, she became aloof and withdrawn from society, until misery seeps in. Her admission to the hospital on the assumption she had appendicitis when it was not the case as was verified by the doctor since “her [blood] count’s all right” (25), subtly suggests that what Miss Sasagawara may really be suffering from was the lack of concern for her emotional wellbeing instead of a physical illness.

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.

After this episode a professor convinced her to go to the hospital and reluctantly she complied. This hospital did not take kindly to her psychosis and restrained her numerous times with straps. She had never been treated this way before and was confused and frightened. She later said for a hospital for the mentally ill it had been a brutal experience (157). She then was moved to a different hospital, memorial Unit 10 (MU10) where she was first diagnosed with “Schizophrenia with acute exacerbation” (167). Though she had finally gotten a diagnosis for her broken brain it seemed more like a death sentence than a diagnosis. She continued on with life in depression, psychosis, and denial.

Psychoanalysts’ understand human personality through behaviors by looking into experiences, including the origin of emotions, thoughts and behaviors. An influential psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud stated that “Life, as we find it, is too hard for us; it brings us too many pains, disappointments and impossible tasks. In order to bear it, we cannot dispense with palliative measures. There are perhaps three such measures: powerful deflections, which cause us to make light of our misery; substitutive satisfactions, which diminish it; and intoxicating substances, which make us insensible to it” (Freud 728). Many of the characters in the movie Girl, Interrupted behave in all sorts of ways, that range from being unreasonable, frightened, happy, sad, or disturbed due to their varieties of behaviors. They all have different ailments that have affected the way they act, respond, and interpret situations. The main charter Susanna Kaysen's personality is explored through various reasons behind the advantages and disadvantages in personality disorders, traits, and humanism. In accordance with personality theories, the movie Girl,

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.

In “Mean Girls” by Tina Fey, there are a few characters that stand out because of how interesting they are. One that stands out the most to me is Karen Smith. In the course of the movie, she deals with her friends bringing a new girl into the group and that girl ends up turning into the “Queen” throughout the movie. Karen has to go through with her friends getting into verbal and physical wars. The writer also reveals that Karen is not the smart one of the group. For example, she tries to catch a football with her chest and it just ends up bouncing off. She appears to be dull-minded and clueless. Karen Smith shows that throughout the story she is a static character because she never changes throughout the movie.

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:

In Bly’s time, mental illnesses were not taken seriously. Bly described the asylum she was admitted to as overcrowded, cold, and dirty (ch. 7). It defeated the purpose of trying to give extra attention to those in need. It was easy to get admitted into an institution, but nearly impossible to make it out because the treatment was not treatment.

Until the medical breakthroughs that we have made in the modern day, psychology as a science was not fully understood. Modern technology has given us a clearer idea of psychology, but in the past there was less known about the science. This alongside a predominantly male medical discourse led to a medical diagnosis in many women called hysteria. Female hysteria was a medical diagnosis given to specifically women as far back as the ancient Greek civilization. Hysteria started as a supernatural phenomena, but as medicine evolved it would be described as a mental disorder, (Tasca). Hysteria. in actuality, is an absurd and fabricated diagnosis that institutionalized and discriminated countless women. The way it makes a women feel, and the fact that it strips a woman of any sort of free will is a sickening display of blatant misogyny. “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman perfectly displays not only the misogyny, but the torture a woman must face trapped under a hysteria diagnosis. Hysteria as a diagnoses fails to effectively treat many women, instead leading to the mistreatment and wrongful institutionalization of women.

Kathryn Merteuil, the primary antagonist in Cruel Intentions, is the master at manipulating both men and women. She is the most popular girl at her school and bases the entirety of her self-worth on her perception that everyone either wants her or wants to be her. In order to maintain her appearance, Kathryn binges and purges and has a heavy cocaine addiction. Although well liked and popular, Kathryn holds no stable relationships and is easily upset and irritated when things do not go her way. Although this film’s focus is not Kathryn’s mental health diagnosis, Kathryn’s actions and unstable emotions are arguably that of a patient with Borderline Personality Disorder.

The author’s topic is about a teenager name Susanna Kaysen. At 18 she voluntarily turned herself into McLean Hospital.

A comparative literary study of the effect of mental illness on the central characters is the semi-autobiographical novels The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen. Comparing two women trying to deal with mental illness and are trying to cope with the mental pressures they put on themselves and by other people. Although the differences between these two novels are The Bell Jar shows Esther’s life before she descends into mental illness whereas Susanna’s story is about her time in a mental institution and experiencing other patients who are in similar situations.

Suzanna Kaysen, the author of the memoir “Girl, interrupted” found herself questioning the notion of normalcy after being admitted to a psychiatric ward due to a suicide attempt in 1967, Kaysen insists she was misdiagnosed with borderline personality disorder. After reading Kaysen’s narrative, I concluded that the diagnose was indeed inadequate, although Kaysen exhibited symptoms of mental illness, she wasn’t suffering from borderline personality disorder, as she there was a lack of evidence to support such claim. Kaysen was a “normal girl” who was temporality interrupted by her mental illness.