Psychoanalytic Criticism In Girl, Interrupted By Susanna Kaysen

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The movie Girl, Interrupted, written by Susanna Kaysen, is a good text to use for a Psychoanalytic Criticism lens. A memoir turned into a movie about a young girl being admitted to a psych ward after trying to end her life and living with a mental illness and finding treatment is a great example to show what Psychoanalytic Criticism really is. “The forgetting or ignoring of unresolved conflicts, unadmitted desires, or traumatic past events, so that they are forced out of the conscious into the realm of the unconscious” (Barry, 97). In applying psychoanalytic criticism the definition of psychoanalysis itself must be understood. It is a form of therapy that is used to help cure mental disorders “By investigating the interaction of the conscious …show more content…

Some symptoms of BPD can include fear of abandonment (1), unstable relationships (2), self-harm (3), and destructive behavior (4). In one scene in the middle of the movie, Rowe gets sent to a different ward for drugging a nurse. (1) Kaysen causes a huge scene and demands to know where Rowe is. Kaysen is so distraught because she claims that Rowe is “All she has left.” Kaysen seems to have a lot of people come and go throughout her life. (2) In one part Kaysen states “I just don’t want to end up like my mother.” This could mean that Kaysen and her mother don’t share the greatest bond. As seen throughout the movie, there is a bandage on the wrist of Kaysen (3) suggesting that she might have cut her wrists when she had a “headache.” Kaysen having destructive behaviors, as mentioned before is an indicator of BPD. (4) In the early movie, it shows how promiscuous she could be. She had a one-time affair with a married college professor who wanted more than she did. She also had an on and off relationship with a boy named Toby who was later drafted in the military, but decided to run away and take Kaysen with him. But, she declined because she didn’t want to leave

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