Must Read Autobiographies - XVII

Girl, Interrupted
Susanna Kaysen

Girl, Interrupted, a memoir written by the American author Susanna Kaysen, was published in 1993. It tells of her experience in a psychiatric hospital, where she was admitted in 1960s. 

In April 1967, 18-year-old Susanna Kaysen is admitted in a private medical hospital, McLean Hospital, in Belmont, Massachusettes, after attempting suicide by consuming an overdose of pills. She denies that it was a suicide attempt to a psychiatrist, who suggests she take time to regroup in McLean, a private mental hospital. Susanna is diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, and her stay extends to 18 months rather than the proposed couple of weeks.

Fellow patients Polly, Cynthia, Lisa, Lisa Cody, Georgina, and Daisy contribute to Susanna’s experiences at McLean as she describes their personal issues and how they come to cope with the time they must spend in the hospital. Susanna also introduces the reader to particular staff members, including Valerie, Dr. Wick and Mrs. McWeeney. Susanna and the other girls are eventually informed that the recently released Daisy committed suicide on her birthday. Daisy's death deeply saddens the girls and they hold a prolonged moment of silence in her memory.

Susanna reflects on the nature of her illness, including difficulty making sense of visual patterns. She questions how doctors treat mental illness, and whether they are treating the brain or the mind. During her stay in the ward, Susanna also undergoes a difficult period, where she bites open the flesh on her hand after she becomes terrified that she has lost her bones. She develops a frantic obsession with the verification of this proposed reality and even insists on seeing an X-ray of herself to make sure. This hectic moment is described with shorter, choppy sentences that show Kaysen's state of mind and thought processes as she went through them. Also, during a trip to the dentist with Valerie, Susanna becomes frantic after she wakes from the general anesthesia, when no one will tell her how long she was unconscious, and she fears that she has lost time. Like the incident with her bones, Kaysen here also rapidly spirals into a panicky and obsessive state that is only ultimately calmed with medication.

After leaving McLean, Susanna mentions that she kept in touch with Georgina and eventually saw Lisa, now a single mother who was about to board the subway with her adolescent son and seemed, although quirky, to be sane.

The memoir does not follow a linear line, but instead the author provides personal stories through a series of short descriptions of events and personal reflections on why she was placed in the hospital.

Namaste

Prabir