Forum; Susanna Kaysen: Girl, Interrupted

from the longhorn radio network the university of texas at austin this is for him then i decided no susan casey author of girl interrupted a memoir of two years in a mental hospital ms miller reading my second novel which was about someone living in another culture in fact about an anthropologist dropped into another culture which is trying to study and i realized that there was the parallel between it's that situation and the situation of being admitted to ramallah hospital in that you know as a foreign culture whose language i can speak and whose rules i didn't understand and where i was rather quickly put into a very narrow were all up part of the plan

this is olive green today one features a conversation with author suzanne occasion ms kazan spent two for formative years in mclean hospital in boston which she describes in her latest book girl interrupted published by vintage books it was twenty five years before she learned the nature of her diagnosis and the extent of her illness she chronicles her experiences at mclean from the standpoint of someone who is recovered her equilibrium but is still seeking to know her future and didn't even get to leave the hospital because you had to learn the rules when you read it and partly i suppose i think partly it has also because i had been there through the critical period from eighteen to twenty which i think is a as a time of life and they she will have a lot of trouble and i think the trouble begins to abate around tony for most people i think

fourteen to twenty or pre ghastly years for a lot of people and i don't know what it is if it's a hormonal are or what but it did i did feel better you found out your diagnosis at what point twenty five years later you then had access to records because of freedom commission el nino but they wouldn't tell you've been what was the time i had a character disorder that mean very much milk was when i saw my actual diagnosis didn't mean very much to me either so because it's written in jordan well just because i didn't i didn't think it was illuminating particularly when i read the diagnosis but at that but there's a long chapter in the book called my diagnosis in which i served offer an alternative diagnosis to their diagnosis it does but any system i used way of categorizing things is bound to fall short when it

comes to the individual so it's not surprising that i thought my diagnosis was constant runaround but eighteen lots of people are trying to find themselves looking in places that optically successful at first how did your situation very normal but hard to say whether a debtor not even in retrospect it's hard for me to say i think that in cambridge massachusetts many many people went to college a quine hospital says it was a local finances or forum for many people but i think that the sixties the turbulence of the sixties also contributed to the parental generation thinking the younger generation was crazy you and perhaps they weren't so crazy you know i think of both those factors nick it harder to say then or now whether i was crazy or ill or you need a hospitalization it's it's not something i really think about in a way because

do you think you could've dropped out and i wanted to the symbolic difference and drugs and enterprising enough not brave and they said yes i was certainly a member of of my generation in that way i was a nascent hippie what about your friends and colleagues while you were at the hospital only kindred spirits to many it partly because i think it one feels a kinship with anybody who's been labeled as a deviant once you've been labeled as a deviant so there was an actual concert among the patients but that some of the staff were great to film there was some other kind of a kinship with them though it was and he had had both a kind of loving strange big confused family quality at the same time that it also had a really awful of clark terry in prison quality and if it had both of qualities

simultaneously which is hard to explain to someone who hasn't been the situation when you were describing conversations from time to time the chorus from your time there i was also wondering what are they actually do not hate to day to day on my hands not much of anyone to make markets in search our always something like dozens of battered weave baskets no we talked awful i mean it was a very heavily for it in ny is therapeutic hospital they really believed in in therapy and we saw three doctors a day in analog law was such an amount of talk by yourself you just couldn't stand out in ways i couldn't get any talk amongst yourselves to monsters has also healing while yeah i guess so i don't know if that's so boring to just be thinking

always about yourself and your own problems in a quiz it makes them worse in a way to turn that much of a magnifying glass on when i mean it coral with this concept of million therapy which is what the klan was doing than i don't know it does now it was a there was a little relief from the fact of being ill that has kept driving into as you're ill you must do this you must do that as simon question where you were ill or not i mean that's a whole other discussion even if you were you know the idea that you would have to think about it all day is just can't be good for anybody were their diversions yeah there were some levers it depended on one's privileges that depend on how much freedom the doctors felt you could have and there was music therapy which was his therapy was going someplace with a record player tape deck and a bunch of instruments and sitting around making music and listening to the beatles' white album was great those nights there was taking a walk if he could roll out to take a walk and there was could play

band in a home like that they looked after the the physical body and to some extent to some extent but but not for everyone i mean there were people who were really stuck on the ward for days and days in business and could get out take a walk and there's that one of the chapters is about a girl screaming that she wants to get some fresh air and but she can't because she can't leave the war and says she just can't get any friends here are you mentioned how much television it was a long time in the vietnam war would steer for you as you looked at these capsules about what was happening in the country do you think they were crazy to know the times were certainly grisly the times were crazy times terribly unstable and i think that certainly for me i can't speak for other people there but i felt a sense of insecurity when i sensed that the turbulence inside me was sort of

matched by an external turbulence that made me uneasy and i don't think that every generation has that feeling because i don't think every historical period is his turbulent as the sixties were they really very disturbing and and fretful and frightening times in which many people got hurt and many bad things happened i get to no particular good outcome that i can see now in retrospect newman explained the difference savage you're establishing between therapy which apparently everybody had an analysis which was pre selected o'dell says is quite different there's not an offer so you don't look at your doctor which makes a big difference in their doctors a certain scene presence behind you and the doctor does not is very non responsive of ways my analyst was extremely non responsive to not just one survivor who wears his therapist can be your friend and

you know your therapist can certainly offer an opinion about something a suggestion about something ask when questions the analyst tries to be unobtrusive that the burden of analysis falls entirely on the patient up i mean that's not completely to the als to some kind of god are supposed to be a kind of a god but the point is to listen to yourself and to learn to hear yourself an analysis worse in therapy i think there's an important point about establishing relationship with someone else in which the dodgers a participant however an analysis of the relationship you establish with the doctor you're establishing with your fancy of who the doctors because the doctor vale cecil so completely that you don't know who your steps your relationship with therefore you learn what your thoughts are about human relations in a vacuum so it's all your own projections i don't like it you were the sturdier stable enough to just weren't you know

fought by my verbal abilities and i think there really a lot of that was that my doctor want to do and he says it's not a gadget made into going into alice's ghazi one that allocation any idea of you know a projection along even got the live taping i don't know i was an analysis for about two years and then i quit i mean usually announces takes years five years and standup comics and thinks how big element or the doctors that only the psychiatrists and seeing cornell says but the other doctors who treated you know as a group good to have a positive response to them why aren't they change time and they were sort of cyclical because they were usually most of them on a six month residency armed so some of them we'd like to think they would show whether these events of that one would

come on ruby they'd have to do of them for six months but they're all he's everybody was he all the doctors are analysts were when asked where one which probably will be the case and hours later we know did you have a nurse ratchet and now well we had we had one nurse who was a bother but she wasn't and she was on the evening shift so you have to do all her as much unity as she was a past i really like her but the date staff were great mostly gun and some were outstanding some were ok but there are a couple of really good nurse was there a big difference we're able to see the ceiling and departure of any of your friends and colleagues that preceded years i saw people down you know some people going out healing or i don't know i guess i just don't come by healing and that there's healing i think there's when scientists would they be looking for

well what they've better like don't yell like don't take drugs like you don't don't make trouble from a soloist joan day you know go off on a joyride in your parents' car and what is just like behave better or believe or don't be a baby girl these other things they call acting out you know well it is acting out i mean i think a lot of that stuff is acting out that you were young you could expect a certain amount of mischief yeah but i think self destructiveness to conserve goes to another level of causing people worry and frustration many observers of the oven yet parent that a call list at one point some of this behavior that was not welcome and it was things like shopping sprees you know now that we know that yes it's funny it's another part of the dog and the diagnosis criteria for the borland personality disorder

that they were associated with it and you know i mean it's chavez freezer associate with names too so shopping sprees it can be a tip off it isn't because all of sudden and buys and i remember knowing someone's manic depressive was he went out and bought an entire encyclopedia britannica not a cheap item to buy one afternoon bond or not bought it and he said i knew i was going to a mania because i did that so you know yes the shopping spree can be a problem was designated a four footer caught but he did comment on how this particular diagnosis is described as something that commonly affects when and consequently some of this other behaviors more reserved for you know somehow i have a theory a well a lot of the list was typically feminine and behavior are associate with women would there not be a a parallel gender universe to

wear it where men could actually be the same thing but it would simply be acceptable in their room but certainly two that men could be more aggressive human can be more aggressive and i get it i noted even than that then a quill and male warrantless or adolescent boys were they were a lot more violent and it seemed to me a lot more disturbed then we were which made me think that the criteria for admission for boys was different set of the things that the boy had to act out more than a girl did to be just bothersome enough to put an animal hospital and maybe more to be really seen her lead i don't know because the ones they were pretty violent awful to them and i've been really effective at the girls did better because they were more confident in to authority and they did get out so it's you know it's i mean it's a truism that women get depressed and then gassed also it's just the way of the world for whatever reason what about the

medication is why a good and forcibly or four tilly who knows very few existed at that point as the natures knockout sick troubled drugstores instills and no real and have made this other stuff i don't even know if they're worried that the there were some of that anti depressants although i'm not sure which one's not all from certainly and certainly not present her review like that aren't there are quite a number of people on anti psychotic medication who were not to my mind psychotic but it's since early slow them down and easier to handle than giving him to me as very lucky very lucky to get me tell you know and then in a slogan are you you're their friend so we're late adolescence as well mostly out it was mostly an adolescent ward not all been mostly but were

you allowed any social exchanges with liam a male patient oh yeah i forget we have the precious we did yes or when there is a lot of socialism in the cafeteria and netting and claws and then you know they if you could get off the war and life is better when you found the tunnels yes it was that sort of like being off the word yes i felt that i mean i think that for some reason they appeal to me critically i don't think everybody misses fond of them as i was i don't know why they just like the appointment whose likeness some training system year per lonesome recipient now and it was that was the quietness and i think one thing that i didn't write very much about that but it that the place was some lawyers say it was very noisy think i got that impression wasn't talking a

lot to me that they weren't letting anybody know people asked if i read and over a rare kept a diary or who could really get a direct it was just too much noise in that this doctor coming out that that's coming in areas and for lunch and i had to do this and now we one away you and then you have to remove the social worker and a half you know it is at the same time they fell again nothing to do and you're bored you somehow have no free time as a bit paradoxical sir situation that many things about the hospital were probably still are very paradoxical i wanna be your i don't wanna be her own in prison and say fine i'm not safe because i'm ineligible if you do anything to me i'm very safe area that gets mixed up into mixed up so too is that there really weren't any contemplative time and tide and this time i well i didn't find any content of times

i'm someone who needs a lot of contemplation and time off life so it was like it is you want to be a writer even though he knew that in high school while i wanted to buy it i mean to want but we all have one of anything i did one but i didn't know how to do it can go about doing that appears not understand your goals pope i think that american society which doesn't have the you know from the outset plays a very high value on non popular culture it's not something that we care about vermont it it only that would just restart from then you have to do live in the astronomer inside that does place a value on non popular culture i think there's a mistaken notion that say the ninth symphony of beethoven and no

margin and picasso's painting somehow just came into the world of some serve urgent birth and then nobody produce them and that they tubman didn't get syphilis and go bananas and death when he was about screwing somebody who gave himself was he didn't really have a life and you know that they're at at the same time that there's a kind of fascination with doris laws there's a lack of belief that human beings just so how making mistakes just people soho making these things where people sort of homemaking with rivets are clothes or whatever they might be making and so there isn't much a sense in the culture at large that you can be an artist that just anybody can do this but in that sunny usual space to turin for two years did you not find some support for that are consonants are different now cyril i mean they were concerned with how was i going to integrate myself

back into society in the end they of course unlike knees were aware of how stigmatized i was going to be when i got out i didn't realize that until i got out of the park to have it is i carry a huge black mark on your life that you will never get rid of an eleven to do is lie when they knew that some of the paint is ashen and then i didn't say they are concerned with what is this girl going to do when she's strange she's eccentric we feel she's very deeply troubled you know how can she ever sustain a relationship with anybody how can she ever support herself war was that there were it was you know maybe i should get dental technician training and they didn't care whether it's gonna be an artist or not that i had nothing to do with their job was to integrate into society and they get that new attacks well look after yourself yes essentially i guess somebody must've thought you reach that point the refusal of the marriage proposal for the flow and then ailes about a job as a lab

technician neither of those things last however i was going to say when you got to grow pozo did they not think that no i think they were happy for me they like i husband to be was nice and he had to come and see me through think the whole second year most of the whole second year that i was in the hospital it was more of a courtship yeah there was a courtship and no and they've liked and that staff was fond of him but is a very nice guy and i went to a student and they were right to like him and he was very steady an attentive and not put off by the fact that i was in the hospital also serve are important and that you know i don't i don't know what my life would've been like heady not stepped in in that way and that don't really don't know how i would have managed leaving the hospital after nearly two years of being exiled from the world how i would manage the world without him so it i feel i owe him a great deal and he was your transition to know

how'd it feel getting a job than having to suddenly structured these summits typically the new map and i hear this every job either and the dances and in that way i hate going to work i hate getting dressed i hated interacting with people you know the thing that his job was i worked completely alone in the dark untold darkness this was i worked at polaroid which is based in cambridge and i was i was running experiments on and i was truly a technician i don't know what i was doing really but i was supposed to run some upstarts on trying to make some kind of a phone and i had a crazy machine like a big a big camera huge cameras are six feet high by three feet and i used the thread some kind of sensitized paper in his care all in complete darkness not even red light and i serve like that if it kept me away from other people who made me feel insecure and i was doing a bad

job probably i probably was to get the police when i was in the dark in there with my machine didn't happen or even or at what point did your writing skills takeover in history to write novels what issue here momentarily to break through into that career i still don't think i really you know i guess when my first novel was published it felt i could say with a straight face and writer there was only eight years ago and i'm forty five so it took a long time to sit at a long time for me to feel that i had a right to call myself a writer i'm i don't know i mean i did i did write a lot but it was so terrible what i was writing them and i knew it was terrible now is discouraging but at some point in my thirties it got better it just got better and it worked it to craft my guess so i don't know how many i knew more i mean about

life ft owned and i'd read more so had better models of writing did you do count you know the reason i ask is because so there are many literary allusions sometimes in the book and universally that it goes through pressure we'll have read more than that as he aged he's an english i think that i've read ten thousand books something i read so much christopher bond everything i read the more i read the more quickly i forget which is really horrible but i'd ever read and in korea and i read the way some people eat they had a library i think the broader and one book you're like you know rex stout murder mystery and then there's that one but i've read and nineteen months of a pro you did have one for the high school so i'm sure they have a law or what are you planning on writing checks i don't know i don't know

i hope i can get back to it the success of this book was so unexpected and it's been a distraction in both the good and the bad sense of that for the last year listen to came out and then be funneled into the busy did you find it easy to write this year much easier if you didn't have to really know how it ended seeks sikhs the guest on for expenses and a kiss and author of girl interrupted published by vintage books of random house or other titles include a set as i knew

him and for field both by the book views expressed on this program do not necessarily reflect the views of the university of texas at austin ward this station technical producer for forum in a white heat production assistant mike lee and your producer and host alex graham communication to austin texas seventy seven one to france for him to say it's a longhorn radio network communications building the ut austin austin texas seventy seven one stephanie says

telecommunications services university of texas at austin this is the longhorn radio network ms bee this week on for an author susanna case and it wasn't that i decided on is that it there's no more easy to use and mental hospital this week on form nice nice things fb