There’s something so very intriguing about mental hospitals.
The mind is such a hard thing to understand and then there’s the history
surrounding mental health: lobotomies, electroshock, sensory deprivation. The
list is long and it is cruel. It’s why mental hospitals are such a good
backdrop for horror! Certainly the only things I’ve ever seen that surrounds
mental hospitals are horror. It’s why I decided to read Girl, Interrupted; it was time to shed some light on the non-horror
side of mental health.
The year is 1967. Susanna Kaysen has just had a session with
a psychiatrist she’s never seen before and has been put in a taxi headed
straight to McLean Hospital–a psychiatric hospital renowned for its famous
clientele and progressive treatment. Kaysen spends the next two years of her
life in the ward for teenage girls. Girl, Interrupted tells the story
of the people and experiences she encountered in a series of short nonlinear
scenes.
Susanna Kaysen was born and raised in Cambridge
Massachusetts. She came from a priviledged family and attended high school at
the Commonwealth School in Boston before being whisked off to McLean to undergo
psychiatric treatment for depression. She was later diagnosed with borderline
personality disorder and spent eighteen months in the hospital. Since then
she’s made a name for herself as an author.
Kaysen’s memoir, Girl, Interrupted, shows her sharp
perception, intelligence, and self-awareness as she paints vivid portraits of
herself and her fellow patients and the doctors at McLean. It’s written almost
as a parallel universe: the crisp, sterile, uniformity of the hospital against
the backdrop of the late sixties. It’s a document that is unflinching in its
portrayal of those around Kaysen. There’s Polly, a sweet girl with disfiguring,
self-inflicted burns to her face and body. Lisa, a sociopath that may or may
not be faking the whole thing just to screw with everyone. Georgina, Kaysen’s
roommate, who’s dating a violent and unstable boy from another ward. The twins
obsessed with roasted chicken and laxatives.
Her
stories are out of order and short offering just brief glimpses into the world
of mental health treatment and recovery but their shortness gives them
poignancy. The stories are out of order and a little spacey, but they’re honest
and darkly funny. Her story is compelling and written in a way designed to
provoke questions and, honestly, it’s just so self-aware. She sees the
difference between madness and sanity in such a way that you, as the reader,
might begin to doubt your take on the two as you see her clarity!
My final thoughts on Girl, Interrupted are that it is ingenious.
It’s a look at a girl’s life as she moves into her adult life in a most unusual
way. The imagery is powerful, the writing even more so. It’s a book
that shows the horrors of mental health without resorting to what horror movies
do and it’s brilliantly done.
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