simply non-conforming, as opposed to insane. In Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted, this fine line between sanity and insanity is explored to great lengths. Through the unveiling of Susanna’s past, the reasoning behind her commitment to McLean Hospital for the mentally ill, and varying definitions of the diagnosis that Susanna received, it is evident that social non-conformity is often confused with insanity. When life becomes
Girl, Interrupted is a memoir written by Susanna Kaysen who was admitted to a mental institution as a young girl. She was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder due to some her “depressive” and “crazy” behavior. Throughout the memoir, we are able to see the realizations that Kaysen has regarding the treatment of young women and mental patients. She touches on some of the stigmatizations that she witnessed herself and of others around her. Some of her experiences surrounding her stay at the
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. Or maybe I was just a girl... interrupted.” (Susanna Kaysen) The protagonist of
Susanna Kaysen's Journal-Memoir, Girl, Interrupted Sane or normal people have wondered at one time or another what it is like in a hospital that houses the insane. Susanna Kaysen opens the door to the reality and true insanity of being a patient in a mental hospital renowned for famous ex-patients, including Ray Charles Sylvia Plath, and James Taylor in her book, Girl, Interrupted. She stays focused on reality and her idea of perception as well as the friendships she acquires in her two
The subject of this analysis is Susanna Kaysen. Susanna is an eighteen-year-old white women who was sent to McLean hospital where she was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. In this analysis, I plan to describe all her relevant symptoms of abnormal behavior, discuss the etiology, and treatment considerations. In addition to discussing her diagnosis and make the case that she was misdiagnosed with borderline personality disorder and that she instead suffered from major depressive disorder
The main character in Susanna Kaysen’s, “Girl, Interrupted” and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s, “The Yellow Wallpaper” are similar in the fact that they both were suppressed by male dominants. Be it therapist or physicians who either aided in their mental deformities or created them. They are similar in the sense that they are both restricted to confinement and must endure life under the watchful eye of overseers. However similar their situations may be, their responses are different. In
What’s the pathology behind the offence? Although every aspect of psychology interests me, psychopathology is the core of my passion. Furthermore, having read Susanna Kaysen’s memoir, ‘Girl, Interrupted’, I realise how easy it is to misdiagnose someone as Kaysen struggled to accept her doctor’s hurried diagnosis. There are many symptoms that correlate with more than one mental illness. A study conducted by Zimmerman et al showed that the more of the borderline
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
Girl Interrupted is Susanna Kaysen 's memoir a series of recollections and reflections of her nearly two year stay at a residential psychiatric program at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts. She looks back on it with a sense of surprise. In her memoir she considers how she ended up at McLean, and whether or not she truly belonged there. Each chapter focuses on one aspect of her experience. Founded in the late 19th century, McLean Hospital had been a facility for troubled members of wealthy
Girl, Interrupted (9.2.15) For two years, Susanna Kaysen spent her life within the walls of McLean Hospital, confined on the grounds that she, among others, possessed a mental disorder that created a danger to herself and others. Published in 1993, her memoir, Girl, Interrupted, captured the strange reality of both living among the insane and the experience of dealing with one’s own mental illness. Organized as a series of loosely connected vignettes, Kaysen revisits her most memorable experiences