Girl, Interrupted, is a true story written by Susanna Kaysen in 1993, based on her experiences in McLean Psychiatric Hospital as an eighteen year old girl. Susanna describes her experiences with the other patients, nurses, doctors, and even her life after being released. With a diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder, Susanna tries to help the reader understand what she as diagnosed with, along what she really felt and experienced while encaged in this facility as a young woman. Being taken through the journey of a woman’s struggle with mental health in the nineteen-sixties causes the reader to ponder on how mental health and its helping facilities have progressed over time and what exactly their purpose is for mentally ill persons. In …show more content…
Later in the book, Susanna goes more into depth about her two main keepers, Valerie, Dr. Wick, and Mrs. McWeeney. Valerie was everyone's favorite nurse because she was the only one that was not afraid of them. She talked back when they did, and she was the most reasonable when a patient tended to act out. Dr. Wick was a therapist that the patients enjoyed nothing more than to mess with. They would use sexual words and even make up false stories just to make Dr. Wick uneasy or uncomfortable. This shortened their time having to talk to her which Susanna describes as an advantage considering she did nothing to help her anyway. Mrs. McWeeney was the only nurse they feared because she liked to handle things in the meanest, harshest way possible, her own way. Susanna goes on to describe feeling almost more free at times than she did when out of the hospital. She says, “As long as we were willing to be upset, we didn’t have to get jobs or go to school. We could weasel out of anything except eating and taking our medication. In a strange way, we were free” (p.94). She says that they had already lost their dignity and privacy, therefore they could not …show more content…
The first critique is the unspoken and sometimes unknown presence of mental health throughout the years. Clearly mental health is something that has been around for so long and to see how uncomfortable people are about it in 2018, one might find it surprising to have a book written in the nineties about someone with borderline personality disorder. The second critique is the parental stress that we do not see. We have talked in class about parental stress being caused by their children and in this case, having to send their child to a psychiatric hospital and seeing them suffer had to have caused some type of stressor on Susanna’s parents but we are not shown that side of it. From what we have learned, one would assume that this situation would potentially cause cases of anxiety and depression. The final critique would be about the way the hospital itself was run and the practice of the nurses and doctors. I think that the way they treated these patients is very inhumane. They do not listen to the way they are feeling they just automatically give them drugs when they ‘act out’. While I understand in psychiatric hospitals this is sometimes the necessary action to take, I thought it was very unnecessary a majority of the times she described it considering the patients were just trying to express concern or frustration. I also recognize that her experiences took place in the late sixties but it made me think
Susanna’s actions prove that she is continually working towards recovering. Jim Watson visits Susanna, asking her to run away with him, however, Susanna denies his proposal and stays at the institution: “For ten seconds I imagined this other life...the whole thing...was hazy. The vinyl chairs, the security screens, the buzzing of the nursing-station door: Those things were clear. ‘I’m here now, Jim,’ I said. ‘I think I’ve got to stay here’” (Kaysen 27). Susanna wants to stay at McLean until she is ready to leave; her choice supports what Buddha said, “There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting” (Buddha). Susanna finds reassurance from McClean as she undergoes her journey. Susanna sees the young nurses at the ward who remind her of the life she could be living: “They shared apartments and had boyfriends and talked about clothes. We wanted to protect them so that they could go on living these lives. They were our proxies” (Kaysen 91). Susanna chooses to take these reminders as a positive motivating force along her journey. However, Susanna is also surrounded by patients who have different, more severe psychoses. These girls do not hinder Susanna’s progression, but instead emphasize her
The novel is narrated by the main character, Chief Bromden, who reveals the two faces of Nurse Ratched, in the opening pages of the novel. He continues sweeping the floor while the nurse assaults three black aides for gossiping in the hallway. Chief chooses to describe the nurse abstractly: “her painted smile twists, stretches to an open snarl, and she blows up bigger and bigger...by the time the patients get there...all they see is the head nurse, smiling and calm and cold as usual” (5). Nurse Ratched runs the psychiatric ward with precision and harsh discipline. When Randle McMurphy arrives to escape time in jail, he immediately sizes the Big Nurse up as manipulative, controlling, and power-hungry. The portrayal that he expresses to the patient's leaves a lasting impact on them: “The flock gets sight of a spot of blood on some chicken and all go to peckin’ at it, see, till they rip the chicken to shreds, blood and bones and feathers” (57). McMurphy finds it appalling that the patients are too blindsided to see Nurse Ratched’s conniving scheme, which is to take charge of the patients’ lives. The only person who understands Nurse Ratched’s game is McMurphy, and this motivates him to rebel against the
Nurse Ratched is portrayed as the authority figure in the hospital. The patients see no choice but to follow her regulations that she had laid down for them. Nurse Ratched's appearance is strong and cold. She has womanly features, but hides them “Her Face is smooth, calculated, and precision-made, like an expensive… A mistake was made somehow in manufacturing putting those big, womanly breasts on what would have otherwise been a prefect work, and you can see how bitter she is about it.” (11) She kept control over the ward without weakness, until McMurphy came. When McMurphy is introduced into the novel he is laughing a lot, and talking with the patients in the ward, he does not seem intimidated by Miss Ratched. McMurphy constantly challenges the control of Nurse Ratched, while she tries to show she remains in control, He succeeds in some ways and lo...
Throughout the film, we learn that each woman has setbacks within her household. One sister has a terrible drinking problem and ultimately loses her job due to excessive drinking and tardiness. The second sister has had several pregnancies that each result in miscarriages due to high stress. As a therapist, there are several different elements to review.
I hated Nurse Ratched before and I sure do now. Her sneaky little schemes to turn the patients on each other make’s me furious. I’m glad McMurphy broke down the window; it’ll remind the patients that her power is limited and changeable. Although, she made McMurphy stronger than ever, even with the countless electroshock treatments. Proving his desire to remain strong in the face of tyranny. “And he'd swell up, aware that every one of those faces on Disturbed had turned toward him and was waiting, and he'd tell the nurse he regretted that he had but one life to give for his country and she could kiss his rosy red ass before he'd give up the goddam ship. Yeh!” (Kesey, 187) I agree to some extent, that without her there wouldn’t be a book, she makes the book exciting even if her methods are all but pure. Her character stands as a symbol of the oppression woman received during that time and in a way, the society in which these characters live are flipped. While on the outside woman have no rights, in the ward they are the all mighty, all knowing, powerful, controllable force. So yah, we need Nurse Ratched but I still hate her. During the course of the short novel she destroyed three men, two of which died and the other was lobotomised. “What worries me, Billy," she said - I could hear the change in her voice - "is how your mother is going to take this.” (Kesey, 231) I can’t say I enjoyed Nurse Ratched being strangled by McMurphy, but I do think she deserved it. Although, it was the end to the battle since the Nurse had won the war. By infuriating McMurphy to that point and her ability to remain calm throughout it all, she proved that McMurphy’s action didn’t faze her. She proved that rebelling is feeblish and by lobot...
Although most of the patients of the ward are allowed to leave whenever they would like, they choose not to because they have women in their lives that dominate over them. We can see Nurse Ratched's domination over the ward when it says, “There’s something strange about the place where the men won’t let
The power that Nurse Ratched possesses gives her the ability to impose fear throughout the ward. After McMurphy’s first therapy meeting, he has a conversation with Harding as to why the patients put up with the cruel actions of the nurse: “No one’s ever dared come out and say it before, but there’s not a man among us that doesn’t think it, that doesn’t feel just as you do about her and the whole business-feel it somewhere down deep in his scared little soul” (62). Harding admits that the patients know what is going on, and often wonder to themselves silently about it. They believe it is wise to stay silent rather than becoming shrewd. The men have become fearful of going against the nurse. All the while, this fear has been chipping away their manhood, and given more power to the nurse. Chief Bromden reveals the staff’s reactions to the cold presence of Nurse Ratched around the hospital: “‘I tell you I don’t know what it is,’ they tell the guy in charge of personnel. ‘Since I started on that ward with that woman I feel like ...
Coming into this topic, I didn’t know much about the scandalous nurse. I scarcely knew about her history and background. I had heard that Allitt was mentally sick and had suffered some obstacles during her childhood. I also knew that her main way of killing was through over doses of insulin, and that she worked at a ward for infants. The speculations that Allitt suffered from an odd mental illness always intrigued me.
... research experiment and not like a patient or with the decency she deserved. Some of the things that the doctors did to Vivian were so unethical and so inhumane that it makes one cringe just thinking about it. Fortunately for Vivian, Susie was the light at the end of the tunnel. She provided care that was compassionate, kind and professional. One hopes that in the future I can embody the qualities that Susie had and display them to my patients on a daily basis. In nursing school we are so focused on knowing the science behind everything or getting our medication out in time that we forget why we became nurses in the first place. We became nurses so we could care for others that could not care for themselves. Susie was the true definition of a nurse and provided patient centered compassionate care to Vivian allowing her to die in a dignified and meaningful way.
Instead of caring for her, they learned from her. In one scene, around four medical students were all touching her stomach at once while trying to learn more about her disease. On the other hand, the nurses are there to care for the paitent. The only one in the film who was ever nice to Vivian was her nurse, Susan Monahan. In order for a hospital to function, there needs to be physicans, nurses, and an administration team. The nurses are there to make sure the patients remain emotionally and physically stable. Susan Monahan simply kept Vivian company. Whenever Vivian was nauseaus or felt overwhelemed with coming to terms with the illness, Susan would make sure to comfort her. She took the time to get to know her personally, and was the first to know that Vivian did not wish to be resisitated when her heart stopped beating. This was a very difficult decision that Vivian had to make, yet it was what she
Susanna Kaysen's memoir, Girl Interrupted describes Kaysen's struggle to transcend across the boundary that separates her from two parallel universes: the worlds of sanity and insanity, security and vulnerability. In this memoir, Kaysen details her existence as a psychiatric patient diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder in a mental institution where time seems circular alongside a parallel universe where time is normally linear. The hospital itself becomes a paradoxical representation of both strict confinement and ultimate personal freedom. Through Kaysen's short, blunt phrase-like sentences, she forcefully impresses the shocking conditions she endured on the memory of her readers. Writing in a subtle, almost Hemingway-stark style, she merely suggests the actual reality of her situation in her objective observations of her experiences, leaving her readers in a disturbing position of being suspended between the world that Kaysen paints and the factual reality.
In the memoir Girl, Interrupted a troubled teen has admitted herself into a mental health institution after a half-hearted suicide attempt and later questions why she was put there in the first place. The memoir has no linear plot line, so the reader follows a series of scattered short stories as told by Kaysen concerning her stay at McLean Hospital. The chapters in the memoir give the reader bits of knowledge an...
She controlled every movement and every person’s actions and thoughts. She made the doctors so miserable when they did not follow her instructions, that they begged to be transferred out if. “I'm disappointed in you. Even if one hadn't read his history all one should need to do is pay attention to his behavior on the ward to realize how absurd the suggestion is. This man is not only very very sick, but I believe he is definitely a Potential Assaultive” (). This quote from the book illustrated how Nurse Ratched controlled her ward. She manipulated people into siding with her regardless of whether it was the right decision. This was malpractice by Nurse Ratched because she did not allow the doctor, who was trained to diagnose patients, to do his job properly. Instead, she manipulated the doctor to diagnose the patients incorrectly in order to benefit her interests rather than those of the
I found the other patients very intriguing. They were constantly changing, new one coming in, some getting well and leaving only to return later on. Deborah and another girl even escaped but the...
The Nurse is also exceptionally kind to others, despite the tragic events she experienced in ...