Girl, Interrupted, the Author Susanna Kaysen Talks Reaction Paper

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Girl, Interrupted, the author Susanna Kaysen talks about her year and a half in a "mental hospital."; The language is by turns funny, quirky, or brutally strong, but always shows remarkable insight into at least some facets of herself. J

The topic she either dodges or diminishes throughout the book is why she was there. She was a "voluntary admission," although she was obviously under great pressure from both family and the psychiatrist who admitted her. She acknowledges that she made a suicide attempt, although she saved herself by getting herself to a public area where she collapsed.

In the beginning of the book we are told that the psychiatrist seemed to focus on a pimple she had picked at that day. The suggestion at this time is that the psychiatrist wildly over-interpreted this to get to a common symptom of her diagnosis, "borderline personality" -- self-mutilation. Then at the very end of the book she mentions that she also used to scratch her face and rub soap in the scratches to aggravate them and make them look worse.

She also makes the point that her friend Georgina "knew" she had gone crazy.

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The author described a specific moment when Georgina's sanity came crashing in upon her, but the author can identify no particular moment. Does that mean she was not what we think of as "mentally ill"

Perhaps it depends on how you define it. Some would say the line between sanity, even flawed sanity, and mental illness, is the point at which you don't have a good grip on reality. Georgina would seem to fit that description; she looked around the movie theatre to see if what happened in her mind had happened to everyone. It is not realistic to think that everyone in the movie theatre would experience what she experienced, at that same time. It does suggest a lack of full connection with reality.

The author writes an engrossing story about her time at McLean Hospital, but we learn far more about the difficulties her ward mates have than the difficulty she has. She is, ultimately, unrevealing about herself. At the end of the book, she acknowledges that she didn't just attempt suicide once but thought about it quite a bit as well. That would not make her a….....

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"Girl Interrupted The Author Susanna Kaysen Talks" (2002, February 06) Retrieved July 4, 2025, from
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"Girl Interrupted The Author Susanna Kaysen Talks", 06 February 2002, Accessed.4 July. 2025,
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