This paper is a consideration of Susanna Kaysen's autobiographical account of her time spent in a mental institution, Girl, Interrupted. Committed to McLean Hospital at the age of 18 after a brief examination by a psychiatrist she had never met before, Kaysen was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and subjected to the dehumanizing conditions of what was considered at the time to be the best mental health care the American medical community had to offer. The experience forced her to spend the rest of her life questioning her own sanity and the fundamental definition of sanity itself. Her account is poignant, brutal, and unrelenting, as she examines the episode that interrupted her life and changed it forever.
On April 27, 1967, 18-year-old Susanna Kaysen left her apartment and took two trains to reach the office of a new psychiatrist. He claimed that his examination of this pale, depressed, suicidal girl lasted three hours; she believes that she spent just 20 minutes in his office, and her conflicting medical records actually support both claims. Time became an important issue for Kaysen; for the next year and a half, many of her struggles revolved around trying to get a solid grasp on the passing of time.
At the end of his interview, the doctor insisted on immediately institutionalizing his new patient. She admitted herself voluntarily, although she did not perceive it as a voluntary choice. She knew that something was wrong with the way she saw the world, but she continued to question whether that necessarily meant she was crazy. She had been experiencing increasing bouts in which she felt incapable of acting the way she believed the world expected her to. She wondered later, "Was insanity just a matter of dropping the act?" (41).
Although she was relieved at first to drop the act, some part of her understood that she had exchanged one prison for another. She writes, "Every window on Alcatraz has a v...