Girl, Interrupted

Girl, Interrupted is a best-selling 1993 memoir by American author Susanna Kaysen, relating her experiences as a young woman in an American psychiatric hospital in the 1960s after being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. The memoir chronicles her lived experience and how she developed the disorder through particular life circumstances rather than an innate, predetermined biological difference in brain chemistry. The intersection between female adolescence and mental illness creates newfound discourse on how social challenges amongst teen girls may prompt unhinged behavior. Susanna Kaysen opens up a conversation on how mental illness is generally perceived in society as a biological deficiency in brain chemicals, but could it be a natural response to societal pressure as a young teen? Is the commodification of mental health portraying a negative stereotype of mental health struggles that could be otherwise better addressed? The memoir's title is a reference to the Johannes Vermeer painting Girl Interrupted at Her Music. Kaysen draws a parallel between the Vermeer painting and her own life by equating music interrupting the girl with the struggles of female adolescence interrupting healthy development. Both serving as an impediment to personal evolution, Kaysen draws on the painting as a source of inspiration for critical analysis of the female teenage experience. While writing the novel Far Afield, Kaysen began to recall her almost two years at McLean Hospital. She obtained her file from the hospital with the help of a lawyer.A film adaptation of the memoir directed by James Mangold, and starring Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie, was released in 1999.