Girl, Interrupted
By: Susanna Kaysen
I’ll be honest, I saw the movie first. I liked the movie, it was entertaining. The acting was delicious. We had Winona Ryder as the intrepid heroine, Susanna, Angelina Jolie giving a brilliant performance as Lisa, a sociopath and proud of it, at least most of the time. To round out the cast, Brittany Murphy as Daisy, a girl with an obsession for chicken and Whoopie Goldberg, playing one of the nurses. She’s like a version of the character she played on Star Trek, always knowing just what to say and when to say it as well as knowing when to NOT say anything. The only difference is the odd hats are replaced with a tasteful Afro and a sporty headband. As usual, the book was better though it didn’t diminish the movie in any way, I recommend both.
A lot of people at one point or another have felt one step away from insanity, most just don’t admit it. This book helps us to not feel like we’re the only ones who have felt that way. Of course the time frame, late sixties, has people being committed to mental institutions for things like being gay or anorexic and while anorexia and “gayness” eventually made it out of the loony bin many other disorders did not, one being borderline personality disorder.
To over simplify the disorder Susanna struggles with in the book, I refer to how one of the psychiatrists describes it, “It’s what they call people whose lifestyles bother them.” As to the accuracy of this statement, I don’t know, seems there’s more to it than that, but it was the 1960's.
The book begins immediately with Susanna going to the institution, there is no pre-story about how it all came to be, that isn’t what the story is about, it’s about first, her disorder, next the disorders of others, and finally, and perhaps most importantly, the times. The time frame is almost like a mute character in the book. This was when Viet Nam was going on, kids were taking over college campuses, people were being assassinated and the world was changing too fast for anyone to keep up with it.
The author never describes in any great detail who these characters are, what they are like remains a mystery and it gives the sense that though she was in that institution with them for almost two years, she never really knew them either. We come to know the characters better through what their disorders are rather than through what they are like. We end up knowing just enough about the characters to remain interested in them while reading on to find out more about the process, the way the nurses and therapists interact with the patients. The way the institution is run.
“Insanity comes in two basic varieties: slow and fast. I’m not talking about onset or duration. I mean the quality of the insanity, the day to day business of being nuts.” Not terribly difficult with a borderline personality. Susanna talks about a job she held for awhile where the treatment of the employees was sexist and to put it mildly, ridiculous, at least by today’s standards. Still she recognized the unfair treatment of the employees and couldn’t relate to how no one seemed bothered by it but her.
What soul-less schmucks would allow themselves to be treated this way on a day to day basis? Having trouble with ridiculous rules, rules that seem made up Gestapo style just to mess with a person, not wanting to blindly fall in line like a good little lemming, is that a mark of madness? I would like to think no, because that’s me, I question things. If it were 1967 would I be locked up too? I would have to say no, my family wouldn’t have been able to afford it.
The book is well written, the author knows just what to do to keep you turning the pages, who knew insanity could be so interesting? A main point in the book is the fear that other people have regarding insanity and in this case having been locked up for it.
“There’s always a touch of fascination and revulsion: Could that happen to me? The less likely the terrible thing is to happen, the less frightening it is to look at or imagine. A person who doesn’t talk to herself or stare off onto nothingness is therefore more alarming than a person who does. Someone who acts ‘normal’ raises the uncomfortable question, What’s the difference between that person and me? Which leads to the question, What’s keeping me out of the loony bin? Some people are more frightened than others.”
This fright, I think, specifically with regard to the disorder Susanna is diagnosed with, is largely due to the fact that borderline personality disorder isn’t “blameless.” It’s mentioned that had she been diagnosed bi-polar at least that’s a chemical imbalance. Or schizophrenia, which is more “real” somehow, people don’t “recover” from schizophrenia after all. Then here she was, diagnosed and “recovered” from a disorder that has mostly to do with not quite being able to function “normally” in the real world.
“A fractured but not disassembled psyche” is what they called it, and all I can think is, “Well sheesh, how many people honestly don’t have a fractured but not disassembled psyche these days?” That is my favorite thing about this book, how relatable it is. Anyone can relate to it in one way or another. It also represents loony bin people in a way they aren’t generally depicted, as intelligent, real people, a sister, a mother, a brother. Then there’s that fear again, could this happen to me? “Some people say that having any conscious opinion on the matter is a mark of sanity.”
Overall I really enjoyed this book. I found it well written and thought provoking. As mentioned, part of my fascination with this book is just how much I could relate to it. Even those readers out there who haven’t experienced that feeling of being on the edge, one step away from insanity, can enjoy a book that raises these questions. After all the book is about a disorder that is called ‘borderline’ which suggests that there is a border, perhaps an invisible line between this world and other worlds.
“And it is easy to slip into a parallel universe. There are so many of them: worlds of the insane, the criminal, the crippled the dying, perhaps of the dead as well. These worlds exist alongside this world and resemble it, but are not in it.”
