Susan Kaysen briefs about the “Girl Interrupted”

Many of what Susanna Kaysen writes resonates with a woman’s own struggles with depression and a general sense of not belonging. The book will affect you in ways that you will feel that it should not have, as in it forced you to face some of your own demons. When reality got "too dense" for 18-year-old Susanna Kaysen, she was hospitalized. It was 1967, and reality was too dense for many people. But few who are labeled mad and locked up for refusing to stick to an agreed-upon reality possess Kaysen's lucidity in sorting out a maelstrom of contrary perceptions. Her observations about hospital life are deftly rendered; often darkly funny. Her clarity about the complex province of brain and mind, of neuro-chemical activity and something more, make this book of brief essays an exquisite challenge to conventional thinking about what is normal and what is deviant. Susaanna Kaysen, the author and main character, recounts a series of non-sequential events as they pertain to her two-year tenure of in-house care at the famous McLean Psychiatric Hospital in the late 1960s. She voluntarily admits herself based on the consultation of a doctor who interviews her for just 20 minutes before diagnosing her with Borderline Personality Disorder and recommending a psychiatric reprieve in order to treat the depressive feelings that led Kaysen to ingest 50 aspirin. The few brief excursions outside of the hospital wall require a high staff to patient ratio, sometimes two to one. Kaysen’s highly insightful memoir ponders the distinctions between crazy and not crazy and also differentiates between slow and fast insanity (both of which lead to mental paralysis) and treatment of the brain with drugs versus the mind with therapy. The clinically dry entry given by the psychological bible, the “Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders”, for Susanna’s disorder is brought to life though accounts of her experiences with the psychiatric in-patient system as well as a candid look into her interpretation of these events; it is further supplemented by the use of scanned copies of her actual doctor’s notes and hospital forms. “Girl, Interrupted” is the perfect read for anyone who has ever questioned what it really means to be crazy and if escape is even possible when it is your own mind that has imprisoned you. It’s RightBooks.in that makes your trip to the world of psychology that a not-so-normal girl encounters, and www.rightbooks.in/product_details.asp?pid=9781860497926&Girl,%20Interrupted is your address to visit.