Girl, Interrupted

Kaysen analyzes the stigma of having stayed at McLean Hospital, since it was a well-known institution in the Boston area. She shares that while patients could apply for jobs and other necessities like drivers’ licenses and apartment leases while staying at McLean, its famous address, 115 Mill Street, made these efforts “problematic” as people made quick judgements about patients’ characters (115). Kaysen applied for a job at a sewing shop and admitted that she lived at McLean; she did not get the position. Kaysen ponders how while many patients did improve behaviorally and treasured their freedom, it remained a challenge to reintegrate into society, to adopt a regular routine and “think straight” (116). When Kaysen informed people that she lived at McLean, she would receive curious responses, some of which were anxious and judgmental. She attributes this to the fact that people are often repulsed by the idea of mental illness and want to distance themselves from the mentally ill to reassure themselves that they will never become ill themselves. Kaysen admits that, looking back on her time in McLean, she feels this same revulsion towards mental patients, and she tries not to dwell on the questions about life and reality that she still has.

At nearly 20 years old, Kaysen was at McLean for a year and a half and was encouraged to find a job and leave the hospital. She remembers her previous work experiences including selling kitchenware and working as a typist. Kaysen recalls how she did not work well under pressure and lost her motivation to succeed when she was constantly criticized by her boss and not permitted to smoke while she worked. Kaysen visited with her social worker, who encouraged her to pursue a practical line of work, such as being a dental technician. She balked at the idea and insisted that she would be a writer. In the end, Kaysen secured her release from McLean Hospital by accepting a marriage proposal from her boyfriend.

Kaysen remembers a Christmas before her hospitalization when she went to a movie with her future husband and his friend. While she and her future husband had a romantic connection, they lost touch when he returned to Reed University and she stayed in Cambridge. Kaysen recalls how after he graduated, he promised to stay in touch with her and later tried to visit her in the hospital, but she was too disgruntled at the time to see him. Eventually, Kaysen had enough privileges to leave the hospital and she spent more time with her future husband cooking at his apartment, and watching movies and the news.

Kaysen received a proposal which she accepted, though she admitted to her friends that she could not envision her future outside of McLean, and that it seemed like “falling off a cliff” (125). Kaysen reveals that her life after McLean “wasn’t quiet” and that she purposely parted ways with her husband so she could embrace a different future by herself (125).

Kaysen ponders the relationship between what we consider the “mind” and the more physical “brain”. She argues that while people like to think that their thoughts, actions, and moods are driven by a mind—that is more than just their brain’s neurons and neurochemical reactions—she thinks that all behavior is brain based. She writes that the aspects of our brains that act as “interpreters” of information are likely the result of “a number—an enormous number—of brain functions working in parallel” (126). She notes that these interpreters are sometimes unreliable, such as when they overreact about small injuries, crave bad foods, or misinterpret what they are observing in the world. Kaysen builds on this point to explore how the brain can produce more than one interpreter to have reflective conversations with itself and correct its own mistakes. She gives the example of a person looking at a bureau but thinking they see a tiger: the brain would produce another interpreter which would point out that that scenario is highly unlikely and that the brain should investigate further to avoid making a misjudgment.

Kaysen writes that what we consider mental illness seems to be when a brain’s interpreters miscommunicate. Instead of being able to correct its overreactions or misinterpretations, its interpreters cannot agree on what they are experiencing. She notes that Freud considered psychotics impossible to analyze because their brains lacked the ability to differentiate between their reality and their illusions. These types of patients would be offered medication for the ‘brain’ instead of therapy for the ‘mind’. Kaysen questions the logic of these very different approaches, and wonders if brain researchers could prove the physical occurrences that caused conditions such as phobias and depressive episodes if psychoanalysis would continue to exist. She concludes by arguing that psychoanalysts who are primarily interested in the ‘mind’ and neurobiologists who research the ‘brain’ should cooperate to generate more helpful and relevant research to understand mental illnesses.