A couple of years before the events described in the movie, she took an overdose had her stomach pumped. Strange, as it may seem but we know nothing about her family, relatives or friends. She voluntarily checks herself into the psychiatric hospital and at first seems to be the sanest patient in the institution. However soon after this she demands to be discharged. Susanna is diagnosed with borderline personality disorder that is characterized by emotional disturbance.
Abnormal Psychology Please answer the following questions completely using your notes or text when needed to justify your answers. 1. After watching the film, why do you think the movie title is Girl, Interrupted? The movie was titled girl interrupted because the character Suzanna had her life put on hold so she can go to this mental institution and while she was there she made friends with Lisa who was causing her to become worse but as soon as Lisa was out of the picture she started to show progress which was being interrupted by Lisa. 2.
Girl Interrupted is about the story of a nineteen year old girl during the 1960's named Susanna who, after a suicide attempt, gets admitted into a psychiatric institution (Claymore) and is diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. During her stay at the Claymore Hospital, Susanna quickly becomes familiar to a number of the institution's residents. These residents included Georgina, a pathological liar, Polly, a terminally fearful burn victim, Daisy, an incest victim and extremely withdrawn agoraphobic and Lisa, a charming, but manipulating sociopath. The focus of this paper will be the symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment that Susanna experiences throughout the film. Borderline personality disorder is characterized by extreme shifts in mood lasting only a few hours at a time.
Originally a book, the movie Girl Interrupted is based on the author, Susanna Kaysen’s, 18 month stay in a mental institution during the 1960’s. Throughout the film multiple characters are introduced all of whom posses their own unique psychological disorder. In Girl Interrupted, Angelina Jolie plays the part of Lisa Rowe a woman diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder or more commonly known a sociopath. This personality disorder involves a lack of ethical or moral development. Some common characteristics of a sociopath or someone with antisocial personality disorder include a lack of anxiety, guilt, morality, or identity.
The movie, Girl Interrupted is about an eighteen-year-old girl, named Susanna Kaysen. She spent two years on the ward for teenage girls in a psychiatric hospital as renowned for its famous clients-Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, James Taylor, and Ray Charles. The movie clearly defines the worlds perceptive of a mental hospital, and what goes on there. The yelling, screaming, and carrying on with the patients and nurses, is all of what is perceived to happen at a psychiatric hospital. In the book, its more in detail, the words carefully chosen, effectively creates a mental picture as you read the book.
Lady Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s most famous and frightening female characters. In Act 5, it is evident that Lady Macbeth is experiencing somnambulistic attacks, or sleepwalking. She wants to be relieved of her guilt because several suppressed ideas of an emotional nature enter into this scene and are responsible for making her act this way. Lady Macbeth is desperately trying to wash away invisible bloodstains on her hands as it is a reminiscence of her experience with the murder of Duncan. She also refers to the murder of Banquo and Lady Macduff while in her somnambulistic state.
After getting into trouble and standing up to Lisa’s cruelty, Susanna undergoes a dramatic change from being a directionless teen, to a confident knowledgeable woman pursuing her treatment seriously and leaving the institution behind. The film begins with a dramatic scene where Susanna is being pushed onto the bed of an ambulance. Her skin is pale white, she is having cold sweats, throwing up and gagging all at once while the male nurse injects her veins with morphine. The camera then goes in for a close up angle and focuses on Susannas wrists which are wounded with very dark bruises. She tries to get words out of her mouth until she finally whispers to the nurse “you should check my hands, there are no bones in it.” The nurses unstrap her hands from the bed and check them, they look at each other in disbelief.
Analysis of Girl Interrupted The movie that I watched was “Girl Interrupted”. The movie takes place some time in the 60’s inside of a psychiatric facility located in Massachusetts. The movie is centered on one character named Susanna and the different encounters she has with other patients in the facility. Susanna is a young girl who is committed to the psychiatric facility after she takes a bottle of aspirin and chases it down with a bottle of vodka. While in the psychiatric ward this is where she is diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder.
The narrator’s obsession with the wallpaper that surrounds her bedroom begins merely as intrigue and climaxes to a point where reality and what she imagines within the wallpaper becomes blurred. This climax represents her journey from rationality to insanity as the wallpaper becomes more twisted and alive around her. This wallpaper ultimately represents the oppression of her mind that is being caused by her post partum depression, as well as her husband’s ineffective healing methods. At first she finds the wallpaper being “one of those sprawling, flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin” (Gilman 988). This could be a representation of the beginning of her depression which was initially just an annoyance to her which she does not fully understand.
According to the room’s decorations, it shows that the woman’s state of mind is unstable and she is having a mental breakdown. Her tone sounds distraught and desperate. The dialogue begins with her pleading for her lover to stay and speak with her. However, the lover only answers with short, vague replies. At one point, the lover says, “I think we are in rats’ alley” (Parker, 115).