Girl, Interrupted is Susanna Kaysen’s memoir of the time she spent as a young adult in a mental hospital. These days, people are booted out of mental facilities as soon as their insurance runs out, recovered or not, but back in the late 60s, apparently some were put in and kept for a long time. The book blurb says two years, but the copy of her medical records looks like closer to a year-and-a-quarter.
What was shocking to me from the first was that she was sent to the hospital on the basis of a short visit to a strange psychiatrist who noticed she had picked a pimple (what adolescent doesn’t?) and wrote down “picking at herself,” and then asked her if she was tired. She said yes because she got up earlier than usual to go to the appointment. Next thing she knew, she was in a cab to the hospital.
Later, she shows the medical report, which says the diagnosis was based on a three-hour interview, but Kaysen devotes a chapter to the timings, including check-in times reported by the hospital and the doctor’s office, to show it was no longer than 20-30 minutes. (She originally says ten.)
Perhaps she’s not an altogether reliable narrator, because she admits in the Introduction to not telling things, and later we hear about one disturbing behavior, although it doesn’t seem to be one that requires incarceration of more than a year. She also tells of a suicide attempt but says she knew immediately it was a mistake.
Other practices of the hospital seem ridiculous, and nothing seems designed toward the girls’ recovery but rather the staff’s convenience.
Interesting stuff.
Towards the end of the book, she dismisses her diagnosis, “character disorder,” and talks about what that might mean. Her own diagnosis is that she was bored and being forced to do things she didn’t want to do. I think that’s called being a teenager.
What? Me Read? 