Girl, Interrupted is a best-selling 1993 memoir by American author Susanna Kaysen, relating her experiences as a young woman in an American psychiatric hospital in the 1960s after being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. The memoir's title is a reference to the Johannes Vermeer painting Girl Interrupted at Her Music. Kaysen draws a parallel between the Vermeer painting and her own life by equating music interrupting the girl, with the struggles of poor mental health in adolescence interrupting healthy development, both serving as an impediment to personal evolution. Kaysen draws on the painting as a source of inspiration for critical analysis of the female teenage experience. While writing the novel Far Afield, Kaysen began to recall her almost two years at McLean Hospital. She obtained her file from the hospital with the help of a lawyer. A film adaptation of the memoir directed by James Mangold and starring Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie was released in 1999. The memoir inspired the 2021 album Queens of the Summer Hotel by the singer-songwriter Aimee Mann. A Girl, Interrupted musical, with songs by Mann, opened in New York City in 2026.
Plot In April 1967, 18-year-old Susanna Kaysen is admitted to McLean Hospital, in Belmont, Massachusetts, after attempting suicide by overdosing on pills. She denies that it was a suicide attempt to a psychiatrist, who suggests she take time to regroup in McLean, a private mental hospital. Susanna is diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, and her stay extends to 18 months, rather than the proposed couple of weeks. Fellow patients Polly, Cynthia, Lisa Rowe, Lisa Cody, Georgina and Daisy contribute to Susanna's experiences at McLean as she describes their personal issues and how they come to cope with the time they must spend in the hospital. The memoir's descriptions of supporting characters gives the reader an idea of how severe each of the characters' circumstances are, which in turn creates a dichotomy between Susanna and the other admittees. Susanna also introduces the reader to some of the staff members, including Valerie, Dr. Wick and Mrs. McWilley. Susanna questions whether the doctors have genuine intentions to successfully treat their patients due to the lack of health progress amongst her peers. Susanna and the other girls are eventually informed that the recently released Daisy died by suicide on her birthday. Daisy's death deeply saddens the girls and they hold a prolonged moment of silence in her memory. Susanna reflects on the nature of her illness, including the difficulty she has making sense of visual patterns, and suggests that sanity is a falsehood constructed to help the "healthy" feel "normal" in comparison. She also questions how doctors treat mental illness, and whether they are treating the brain or the mind. During her stay in the ward, Susanna also undergoes a period of depersonalization, where she bites open the flesh on her hand after she becomes terrified that she has "lost her bones". She develops a frantic obsession with the verification of this proposed reality and even insists on seeing an X-ray of herself to make sure. This hectic moment is described with short, choppy sentences that show Kaysen's state of mind and her thought processes as she went through them. Also, during a trip to the dentist with Valerie, Susanna becomes frantic after she wakes from the general anesthesia, when no one will tell her how long she was unconscious, and she fears that she has lost time. Like the incident with her bones, Kaysen here also rapidly spirals into a panicky and obsessive state that is only calmed with medication. After leaving McLean, Susanna mentions that she kept in touch with Georgina and eventually saw Lisa, now a single mother who was about to board the subway with her toddler son and seemed, although quirky, to be sane. Susanna's static mental health state and uncertainty about being "cured" when she is officially released from the institution sheds light on the subjectivity of mental illness. Individuals who exhibit emotions not commonly expressed are ostracized from society when in reality as humans we are all capable of experiencing mental health crises if strictly analyzed by a professional. Being "crazy" was her natural response to life's stressors at an especially vulnerable time dedicated to healing her inner child.
Characters Alongside Kaysen, there are two main groups of characters: the patients and the staff. In addition there are Kaysen's parents, her boyfriend, and various other minor characters, such as her former boss.
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