Susanna's Suicide Chapter Summary

Susanna is an 18 year old girl who just graduated high school in the late 1960’s, after a suicide attempt and a session with a therapist sends her to a psychiatric hospital called Mclean, where she spends two years with a group of girls who all have mental illnesses and issues of there own, Susanna’s thoughts are her thoughts of what went on in the hospital with this group of girls and how she was able to analyze herself, in this book you follow her through the journey of a mental asylum where we learn about insane and sane and recovery of the insane and sane.

This book is a memoir of author Susanna Kaysen who was sent to a psychiatric ward in the late 1960’s, she was sent there for borderline personality disorder, this story doesn’t have

a specific storyline it is a series of her thoughts and stories that aren’t in chronological order of her experience in the hospital. Susanna is sent there by a psychiatrist whom she had just met, she had tried to commit suicide by swallowing pills, even though Kaysen denies the suicide she stays for 18 months at the hospital in the hospital she befriends, Lisa, Cynthia, Polly, Lisa Cody, Daisy, and Georgina who contribute to her stay at the hospital Susanna talks about there personal issues and what they do at Mclean she also reflects on herself and her personal issues and illness, she analyzes the difference between the brain and the mind and question whether they are treating her bra

in or her mind, Susanna goes through a period of depersonalization where she doesn’t believe that she has bones in her hand so she attempts to cut her hand open to see her bones, Susanna also has trouble with defining time and she needs to know how

long she does certain things such as how long she was under anesthesia she questions how long she was with the psychiatrics who sent her to the hospital since he says there meeting wads three hours and she thought it was 20 minutes. Susanna also talks about some of the nurses at Mclean and what they learn about them. After 18 months Susanna leaves Mclean to marry a man, in the end of the story it is years later and Susanna states that she still keeps in touch with Georgina and that he had ran into Lisa now a single mother both Lisa and Georgina are out of Mclean.

The quality of the book in regard to its psychological content is very accurate, Susanna was sent to Mclean for depression and depersonalization a symptom or an issue of depression is, “may experience a lack of interest and pleasure in daily activities,” (APA) When Susanna is analyzing herself she remembers how all her classmates in high school all had ambitions and dreams and did all the school work she remembers how she didn’t have any dreams and how she wouldn’t do work simply because she didn’t want to and she never had an excuse.

When Susanna went through a period of depersonalization she thought that she didn’t have any bones in her hand she went through an intense identity crisis in psychology today they describe the feelings and the outcome of these periods of identity crisis, “People with acute onsets of depersonalization in many instances undergo such an overwhelming identity crisis that they cannot conceptualize, formulate, or describe their experiences of losing their "self." Unbearable fear and avalanching anxiety urge them to seek immediate help, sometimes rushing to the ER.”

(Bezzubova)

Many parts of the movie are different from the book, in the movie they add extra scenes with Lisa and Susanna, scenes they added involved Lisa in the movie more than she was ever involved in the book, in the movie she was a huge part of the plot. They added the scenes of Lisa and Susanna running away and Lisa trying to kill Susanna, in the movie Lisa is shown a lot more and she seems played up in the movie where as Susanna seems played down in the movie and she doesn’t seem as mentally unstable in the movie as she does in the book. Georgina is mentioned less in the movie and Daisy life and story are blown up and tied into Susanna’s story and life in the mental hospital. The movie has none of the insight as the book and it’s seems that it was made just to seem interesting and please more people where as the book is for people who can really understand and gain insight from the book. Most people who love the movie will either hate the book or love the book and hate the movie since the main characters are played differently in the book and movie. Susanna in the movie is majorly played down and is much more impressionable in the book than in the movie, in the movie Lisa is the most impressionable. The movie is a toned down version of the book except for Lisa who is blown up, the movie is less graphic they never show Alice covered with feces. In the book Daisy’s suicide isn’t caused by Lisa in the movie they tied her suicide in with Lisa and Susanna running away. The movie is loosely based on the book it isn’t an adaption of the book because of the major plot differences.