Girl, Interrupted
Susanna Kaysen
Written by — Spandana Rao
*Trigger Warnings — Suicide and self harm*
“People ask, How did you get in there (mental hospital)? What they really want to know is if they are likely to end up in there as well. I can’t answer the real question. All I can say is, It’s easy.” ( Girl, Interrupted Susanna Kaysen, 1993)
Susanna Kaysen is an American writer, from Massachusetts, who came to prominence as a writer ,through her well-known memoir Girl, Interrupted. Her other famous works are Asa, As I Knew Him and Far Afield. Be it fiction or nonfiction, her works often possess some strong autobiographical elements. Kaysen experienced an unhappy adolescence which is lightly reflected in her memoir Girl, Interrupted. Susanna suffered from acute depression with suicidal intentions and tendencies in her teenage years, was later diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.
Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted, follows her time spent at the famous psychiatric hospital, McLean Hospital, Belmont, Massachusetts. She talks about her experience, a glimpse into the lives of other patients, the hospital, and some perception to the way of life in a mental institution, and how the patients are treated within the confines of four walls. The entire book is set in the women’s ward. The book also has some humorous and dark comical writing.
Susanna is an Eighteen year old. She did not pay attention to any subject in school other than English and Biology; and wrote poems instead of papers for her assignments. Hence, she always got an F. She disagreed with her parents and teachers when they told her she had an ‘unstable self-image’. She,in fact, had a clear insight that she was unfit for the Educational and Social system.
Patients weren’t allowed to possess any ‘sharps’ or any other objects that would help them commit any sort of self-harm. That would be Lisa’s long and beautiful nails and her belt (she could have hung herself with it), Georgina’s stud earrings. Razors, nail clippers, badges with pins, knives, forks and spoons, the list was endless. Electroshock therapy and seclusion were largely used as forms of treatment alongside medication. Thorazine always came to the rescue when any of the patients acted out.
After receiving her diagnosis as Borderline Personality Disorder, Susanna looked up the disorder in the DSM (3rd edition, 1987) to see what they really thought about her. One of the lines goes like this-
“This is often pervasive, and is manifested by uncertainty about several life issues, such as self-image, sexual orientation, long term goals or career choice, types of friends or lovers to have, and which values to adopt.”
However, Susanna thinks this a pretty good description of adolescence itself. It’s the story of every other teenager, isn’t it? Susanna also muses upon the possibility that Borderline Personality Disorder might be removed from the DSM and may not be considered as an abnormality anymore, like in the case of homosexuality. Homosexuality was earlier include in the Diagnostic Statistic Manual as a mental illness under Gender and Identity disorders. One also underwent ‘treatment’ to rectify their homosexual behaviour. However, homosexuality is no longer in the DSM. It has been removed and there is no treatment for it,anymore.
Kaysen explains mind and mental illness in a way it has never been explained before. You cannot see the mind. But if it were possible to map all your thoughts and actions, the mind would be visible.
At the end of the day, all the thoughts are electrical impulses, nerves, dendrites, and synapses.
Who interprets them? Let’s say that there is an interpreter in your head. This interpreter claims to be the mind. It says, “You are depressed because of work stress” or “You are depressed because serotonin levels have dropped”.
However, there can be more than one interpreter. Let’s keep it simple to understand and say there are two interpreters. Interpreter one is reporting, interpreter two is judging. Mental illnesses arise when there is miscommunication between the interpreters or when one or more of them are malfunctioning or acting irrationally. Say interpreter one says it sees a tiger. But interpreter two says, no that’s a cupboard, there are no tigers here. But case one convinces two that it is a tiger and the person might be mentally ill.
The connection between mental illness and creativity is a widely disputed argument. There are researches that support it, and some that oppose it. Quoting from Kaysen’s book,
“Our hospital was famous and had housed many great poets and singers. Did the hospital specialize in poets and singers, or was it that poets and singers specialized in madness?”
Many great artists have found to be struggling with psychological disorders, thus forming a link between mental illness and creativity.
The following is learnt from the Indian Psychiatric Journal:
While it is quite clear that emotional instability is usually detrimental to creativity, it may also be advantageous. It may provide intense motivation, the imagination and the inspiration is very much required, for new discoveries and breakthroughs. It may also allow the artist or writer to escape powerful social and cultural constraints that favour conformity and convention. References to famous, emotionally disturbed artists, like Vincent Van Gogh, Franz Kafka, Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, Charles Darwin, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath and others are cited widely in the literature (There’s also the very interesting Sylvia Plath Effect, which explains that people who write poetry are more prone to being depressed).
And lastly, I would like to address the taboo about mental health with respect to the book. There’s a certain instance where Kaysen applies for a job after being discharged from the hospital. But interviewers always rejected her because, in their eyes, she is still a ‘madwoman’ who spent a while in a loony bin. People do not look beyond her illness. There’s also a general misunderstanding, not only about mental illness, but also in regard to visiting a psychiatrist or a therapist.
Though we can see some changes in the past few years, the dismissive mindset is still overtaking the minds of majority of the population. We still have a long way to go in understanding mental health; and that you should not have to be characterised “crazy” to see a therapist.
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