471E4--Week 9 Questions/Comments--Thursday

Even though I've seen the movie, the book provides a more chilling and detailed account of Kaysen's time in the McLean asylum. I constantly felt like she was questioning mental illness and how mental illness was defined, who is crazy. Which I thought echoed our previous readings of patients within the asylum who questioned mental illness. I'm not surprised that patients did so because as we saw in the readings earlier this week, most patients believed they weren't "crazy". - Maggie Nunn

One scene that I thought was important was the scene with Lisa, Valerie and the window. Kaysen notes how Lisa is hysterical and makes this scene over the window and then doesn't truly care if the window is opened. Lisa shrugs it off as something to do and occupy her time. This entire scene eptimozes how mundane life was for patients in the asylum. Lisa's scene was a way to pass time because life was so monotonous. While reading the scene, I thought it was a bit dramatic but after thinking about it I can't help but empathize with Lisa. Not sure if all of her behavior was necessary but patients must have felt bored quite often in their daily asylum life.- Maggie Nunn

Another part I like was the mention of al the famous people in the asylum such as Sylvia Plath and Kaysen's mention of poetry. She notes how people with mental illness like the structure of poetry which reminded me of the Opal and all the poems that patients had written. -Maggie Nunn

I thought how Kaysen presented her story was interesting. I expected one fluid story instead of separate events. One united theme she used was questioning her sanity and whether she was indeed ill or not. While reading, I wondered why she picked the title she did. The last section, sharing the title gave me perspective. The book is titled girl interrupted because of the fact that she felt her life was interrupted when it should have either ended, or just continued. ~Emily Barry

Having her case notes next to her narrative adds an interesting layer. It amazing how sometime the doctor's notes match her story and other times makes her story seem worse than she described. It reminds me of chapter "Do You Believe Me or Him?" because both stories are plausible. -Kasey

One scene that really stuck out to me is on page 155 where Kaysen talks about her self-image and how she could see it and understood that it was not meant to be in an education system but parents and teachers saw her as unstable. A lot of people are not meant for school and would learn better by being taught a job hands-on instead of attending school and college. But for some reason taking that path in life is looked down upon. So as a young adult, being told you are unstable simply because you don’t like the structure of the school system can be very taxing because it is at this same time you are also supposed to know what you want to do for the rest of your life. - Morgan H.

In a lot of other stories we have read so far, it seems as if many of the patients come and go from areas in the hospital. But in this book Kaysen seems to spend her two years in the same place and with many of the same people. Is this unusual or is it more unusual to be moved around? - Morgan H.

It was interesting to read how rules about interaction between genders were laxer in the 60’s than in the past (though not really surprising, but still this was a mental hospital). Such as Georgiana not only having a boyfriend (Wade) in the institution but also being allowed to spend time with him in her room unsupervised. Times certainly changed since the rigid gender-separate wings of the early days. –Scott Campbell

The privilege system is discussed in “The Prelude to Ice Cream” chapter. This is a practice that goes back to the nineteenth century where access to amusements was given to patients who behaved. I think this is one of the few practices (along with scheduled “checks”) that has survived since the original institutional model promoted by Superintendents like Kirkbride. –Scott Campbell

I'm curious how much of the book is artistic license and how much is entirely truthful. It seems like some of the characters might be parts of entire people, particularly the two Lisas. -Joanna Jourdan

Do you think this experience, for the author, was a haunting one or a healing one? As I was reading I though how the characters seem to wear masks. And how we all seem to operate, or hide, behind veils depending upon the situation. Do these veils serve as more of an aid or a hindrance? Do we really need them? Do you think that perhaps sanity is mask that is all in our minds? ~ Alex Young

At the beginning of the Bare Bones chapter, she says “If our families stopped paying, we stopped staying and were put naked into a world we didn’t know how to live in anymore.” This made me think of prisoners before there were re-entry programs. Are there re-entry programs for anyone who has spent time in an institution? – Katie Tryon

I really wanted to figure out if her 2 year stay was warranted or not but I still have not come to a decision. Some of her thinking such as the aspirin and wanting to rid herself of a certain part of her character, really made me question her sanity. Though, I’m guessing that’s part of the point, what warrants being committed and what doesn’t? –Katie Tryon

Kaysen mentions a couple points that I think are especially important to our discussion of mental institutions. We’ve talked a lot about the social control theory, but I think Kaysen adds a good argument to the contrary. She checks herself into McLean voluntarily after taking 50 aspirin because she woke up “knowing” that taking the pills was her purpose that day. Also, she presents the debate in a person’s mind about whether they are seeing a tiger or a dresser. Anyone seeing a tiger in their room is most likely going to be in distress be eager for help, whether they want to gain control of their life to function in society or not. -Joanna Jourdan

I have never watched the movie based upon Girl, Interrupted but the story itself really intrigued me because in all honesty, I saw a lot of my friend in Kaysen. My friend has also been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, so perhaps the similarities between the way the two think can be attributed to their disorder. Kaysen's narrative takes a much different approach than the other patient accounts we have viewed so far, mainly by examining the question and definition of mental illness and providing a look into the way patients viewed each other. --Chelsea Chin

What also intrigued me about Kaysen's account is the level of camaraderie among the patients. Perhaps the few number of patients mentioned contributed to the friendship among the girls, but they really seemed to bond (at least according to the way Kaysen portrayed their relationships). I felt a strong in-group, out-group bias in the way that Kaysen described the group's judgments of other people, and I thought it interesting that others had to earn their respect. --Chelsea Chin

On Page 94, Kaysen discusses how the world continued to go on and they could just watch it on T.V. Kaysen surprisingly points the hospital out as being a refuge. In a time of such confusion in America I can see how Kaysen enjoyed being in the asylum. She and the other patients didn't have to deal with society's problems but could just observe. The asylum was like their security blanket. I'm sure some patients never claimed sanity because they possibly wanted to stay in the asylum away from problems from family/society. -Courtney Collier

Kaysen makes a good point on page 122 how even if a mentally-ill patient could hold a job, the world would see them as all the same, "tainted." No matter what disorder you have they clumped you all in the same category. -Courtney Collier