GIRL, INTERRUPTED
Susanna Kaysen
1993
Turtle Bay Books
$17.00
It can occur at any time in life, but for me, and I suspect for a lot of
people, it occurred in late adolescence. I remember most vividly the sense
of hopelessness. Life was not turning out as I had wished. It was a period
when days passed aimlessly, and I had no interest in what lay ahead. I became
fatalistic and overbearingly self-absorbed. There was no one to really talk
to about any of this, certainly not my parents. The deepening alienation
played out in slow motion with all of the drama of youth. When it seemed
as if it were never to end, I found myself thinking: Why not give up? Just
let go. As it turned out, I, like a lot of people, couldn't afford to. Susanna
Kaysen could.
Ms. Kaysen, in Girl, Interrupted, describes with both realism and
charm what happened to her as a function of letting go. In 1967, at the
age of 18, she voluntarily signed herself into a psychiatric hospital. Her
slim book spans the one and one-half years of her life spent in the adolescent
girl's ward of McLean Hospital. There are no victims in her memoir, and
there is little psychological jargon. What Ms. Kaysen provides the reader
is a series of emotionally moving vignettes detailing day-to-day life at
McLean. Her recollections are at times disturbing (patient Polly setting
herself on fire), at other times humorous (patient Lisa arguing that it
was possible to give her boyfriend a blow job between the routine fifteen
minute staff checks), and still at other times poignant ("Valerie was
strict and inflexible and she was the only staff person we trusted. We trusted
her because she wasn't afraid of us"). Ms. Kaysen keeps the reader
transfixed. But, ultimately, Ms. Kaysen does much more. In her quiet way
she challenges the murky definitions of normal and abnormal behavior.
She begins Girl, Interrupted by describing madness as a place, a
"parallel universe," that one can easily slip into. "Most
people pass over incrementally, making a series of perforations in the membrane
between here and there until an opening exists. And who can resist an opening?"
Later, as she slowly examines the reasons -- the perforations in her life
--for her profound depression and attempted suicide, she sounds human and
real and like so many other adolescents who are confused about who they
are and what they are to be. But Ms. Kaysen was not like all adolescents;
she ends up with a diagnosis, borderline personality, which she herself
suggests was accurate but not profound. "An essential feature of this
disorder is a pervasive pattern of instability of self-image, interpersonal
relationships, and mood, beginning in early adulthood and present in a variety
of contexts." In her medical records it was noted that she suffered
from "[U]ncertainty about several life issues, such as self-image,
sexual orientation, long-term goals or career choice, types of friends or
lovers to have. . ."
She, like so many of us, didn't know how to climb out of the black hole
she found herself in, and no one else knew how to help her. But for many
of us, life just keeps forcing itself on us, making demands and requiring
movement. For Ms. Kaysen life virtually stopped. Her refuge was McLean,
one of the most prestigious psychiatric hospitals in the country.
It is perhaps fitting that Ms. Kaysen's memoir is published just as psychiatric
wards and hospitals are closing across the country. As it turns out, psychiatric
hospitals have never been particularly effective for anything other than
as a refuge.
Indeed, when Ms. Kaysen leaves McLean her "character disorder"
is pretty much intact. But what has since changed is the way she views her
imperfections, and, as a result, how she talks about them. Their significance
shrank as her experience grew.
In Girl, Interrupted, Ms. Kaysen shows us from within and from without
the "parallel universe" of the mentally ill. While skillfully
maneuvering between this world and the world considered healthy, she finds
herself asking: Which is crazy, or am I? She convinced me that it isn't
she. But more important, she reminds us of the painful lives many adolescents
live. Unfortunately, there are no road maps to sanity. This fact makes Emily
Dickinson's words all the more disquieting:
"You'll find - it when you try to die -
The Easier to let go - "
Sadly, all too many adolescents let go.
Maggie Vaughn received her Ph.D. at Western University in 1980. After
teaching at Kalamazoo College for teo years, she was awarded a post-doctoral
fellowship at Harvard University, where she worked with B.F. Skinner. In
1984 Dr. Vaughn joined the psychology department at Salem State College,
where she is currently an associate professor.