Girl, Interrupted

Susanna Kaysen

4 ideas

1. Twenty-minute interview, nearly two years confined

   In 1967, 18-year-old Susanna Kaysen saw a psychiatrist she had never met. After an interview she remembers as lasting about twenty minutes, he sent her by taxi to McLean Hospital, where she signed herself in and stayed nearly two years with a borderline personality disorder diagnosis. She had earlier swallowed about fifty aspirin, but the admission rested on a brief encounter and a diagnosis she later contested, and her reproduced records gave a different account of how long the consultation took.

2. Diagnostic criteria can pathologize ordinary deviance

   Kaysen sets the clinical definition of borderline personality disorder beside her own life. She argues its traits (unstable self-image, impulsivity, uncertain goals, chaotic relationships) describe much of ordinary adolescence, especially for a young woman who rejected expected paths like college and sexual restraint. A diagnosis framed as neutral description can function as a judgment on social nonconformity, particularly when applied along gendered lines.

3. Madness as viscosity versus velocity

   Kaysen divides mental disturbance into two opposite states. Viscosity is a slowed, thickened mind in which every thought and action feels mired. Velocity is a racing mind in which perceptions and associations come too fast to process.

4. The case file as a rival narrative

   Kaysen places photocopies of her own hospital records inside the memoir, so the institution's clinical voice sits against her remembered account. The reader can see where the records confirm her story, where they contradict it, and where they reduce a person to shorthand. This shows that official documentation is itself an authored story whose authority comes from the institution, not from greater accuracy.

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