In 1967, after a session with a psychiatrist she'd never seen before, eighteen-year-old Susanna Kaysen was put in a taxi and sent to McLean Hospital. She spent most of the next two years in the ward for teenage girls in a psychiatric hospital as renowned for its famous clientele—Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, James Taylor, and Ray Charles—as for its progressive methods of treating those who could afford its sanctuary.
Kaysen's memoir encompasses horror and razor-edged perception while providing vivid portraits of her fellow patients and their keepers. It is a brilliant evocation of a "parallel universe" set within the kaleidoscopically shifting landscape of the late sixties. Girl, Interrupted is a clear-sighted, unflinching document that gives lasting and specific dimension to our definitions of sane and insane, mental illness and recovery.
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Exploring institutionalization, illness, and the boundaries of mental health, American literature found one of its most compelling personal accounts in the memoir Girl, Interrupted. Author Susanna Kaysen drew directly on her own young adulthood to craft a candid, precise examination of psychiatric treatment that resonated widely with readers and critics alike.
Born on November 11, 1948, and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Kaysen is the daughter of economist Carl Kaysen—a professor at MIT and advisor to President John F. Kennedy—and Annette Neutra Kaysen. She attended high school at the Commonwealth School in Boston and the Cambridge School of Weston before being sent to McLean Hospital in 1967 to undergo psychiatric treatment after a suicide attempt. During her eighteen-month stay at the psychiatric facility, she was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. Following her release, she pursued a career in literature and was awarded fellowships at MacDowell in 1988 and 1991. In 1993, she published her experiences in the memoir Girl, Interrupted, which earned widespread critical acclaim and was later adapted into an influential 1999 feature film starring Winona Ryder. Beyond her famous memoir, Kaysen has authored novels including Far Afield and Asa, As I Knew Him.
Kaysen's prose is characterized by an exacting, detached, and observational tone that avoids melodrama even when navigating deeply intimate and distressing topics. Her work frequently scrutinizes the medical establishment, the subjective nature of mental illness, and the arbitrary boundaries drawn between sanity and madness. By integrating medical records, clinical documentation, and sharp reflective narrative, she examines how illness and institutional oversight reshape individual autonomy, identity, and personal history.
