Girl Interrupted is a
movie directed by James Mangold who screenplays the life of Susanna Kaysen on
the big screen in order to describe the life of people that suffer from
psychological disorder. While watching the movie, most of the things that the characters
say to each other cause me to feel sympathy for what they are going through.
It’s as if they are all going through a journey to help find themselves which
is very difficult for them to do. This journey can make the individual or break
the individual. Two characters that are going through a psychological disorder
are Susanna Kaysen and Daisy who are also roommates with each other in the
asylum.
Susanna psychological disorder is borderline personality
and depression, and she was sent to the asylum because she overdoses herself
with pills. When Lisa Cody shows Susanna her profile, the psychiatrist
diagnoses Susanna with psychoneurotic depression and borderline personality.
She denies this because the symptoms of “highly intelligent but in denial” is
something that frustrates her. Susanna thinks that she is worthless and is
always vacillating between her emotions causing her to make “ambivalent” her favorite
word. The treatment and therapy that Susanna is given are pills for her
depression and a humanistic therapy for her borderline personality. When she
attends therapy with Dr. Sonia Wick, Susanna starts out by telling her that she
is ambivalent and the therapist asked her what that word meant. Susanna tells
the therapist that she doesn’t care what the word mean, so the therapist tells her the meaning of
the word causing Susanna to stay quiet.
Daisy is the roommate of Susanna and she always stays in
her room. Lisa notices that Daisy always has chicken under her bed which causes
Daisy to become angry. Daisy was released and provided a home for Lisa and
Susanna when they ran away. Lisa tells Daisy what she thinks of her by
revealing that Daisy has an incestuous relationship with her father and that
Daisy likes it. Moreover, Lisa continues to tell Daisy that she is not jealous
of her because Daisy is the same person who would always live by her father’s
rules. She also tells Daisy how the chicken represents her father and takes her
hand in which Daisy has a lot of laceration because she is cutting herself.
Daisy is going through depression and obsessive – compulsive disorder because
she always obsessed in satisfying her father causing her to
eat a lot of chicken and asking him to buy her pretty things. Her depression
disorder is caused by the simple fact that she’s in denial with herself and her
past is always hunting her. Daisy wants to repress the past, but it’s
impossible. This is shown by how Daisy is constantly cutting herself in order
to alleviate her pain and situation. Daisy is receiving pills to calm her
anxiety or to help her constipate; moreover, she should be taking
psychoanalytic therapy. This therapy makes her unconscious become conscious and
it helps understand the early stages of her life that explains why she acts
the way she does. Unfortunately, Daisy ended up killing herself.
The girl’s psychological disorder causes each and every
one of them to not live their life making them feel as if they can’t fit into
this world. Susanna learns that nothing is impossible and that she can overcome
her disorder because she’s still alive. Daisy and Susanna disorder made them
vulnerable and it shows that they need to take their therapy seriously in order
to cure all their wounds.
