Girl Interrupted Sparknotes

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FILM SUMMARY Girl, Interrupted opens with an interesting quote from Susanna Kaysen, the woman who wrote the original novel on which the movie is based. It goes “Have you ever confused a dream with life? Or stolen something when you have the cash? Have you ever been blue? Or thought your train moving while sitting still? Maybe I was just crazy. Maybe it was the 60s. Or maybe I was just a girl... interrupted” (“Girl, Interrupted”, 1999). In the film, we follow Susanna Kaysen as she journeys through the mental health treatment process, from initial events, like her suicide attempt, to diagnosis, treatment by institutionalization, to eventual recovery. Along the way, she has many misadventures with her fellow patients and the staff of the institution and gains many life-long friends. Through the process, she also gains something she didn’t have before: a concept of who she truly is and what she wants to do with her life (“Girl, Interrupted”, 1999). DEFINTIONS OF THE CONCEPTS Of all the questions we ask ourselves in our lives, there is one that stands out. It is something we ask ourselves when we are young and still developing, something that we think we know when we are teens, and something we discover as we grow older and more certain in ourselves. The question is: “Who am I?” Self-concept. According to Myers, “by the end of childhood, at about age 12, most children have developed a self-concept” (Myers, 2013, p. 193). Basically, we all have some awareness of who we are at a very young age. Of course, this identity is not set in stone, but rather changes as they grow into young adults. Self-concept is also about how we perceive ourselves. Baumeister states that self-concept is “the individual’s belief about himself or herself, inc... ... middle of paper ... ...from low self-worth. Since they feel that they are flawed due to having mental illnesses, they frequently compare themselves to individuals in the outside world. One patient, Daisy, is driven to commit suicide when another patient, Lisa, exposes all the flaws in Daisy’s self-image and thus destroys her self-worth as Daisy felt that she was close to her ideal self. In the end of the film, Susanna reveals that many of the girls received the treatments they needed and were released from institutionalization and back into the world. She saw many of them again after being released. In realizing that their disorders were part of who they were, and not some intrinsic flaw, the patients were able to change their self-concepts, ideal selves, and increase their self-worth so that the treatments given by the doctors and nurses were able to succeed (“Girl, Interrupted, 1999).

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