Girl, Interrupted Study Guide & Plot Synopsis

Girl, Interrupted Plot Summary

Preview of Girl, Interrupted Summary:

Susanna Kaysen offers a personal memoir about her diagnosis with Borderline Personality Disorder and subsequent confinement at McLean Hospital. After attempting suicide, Kaysen voluntarily commits herself and is assigned to a medium-security psychiatric ward. Over the next approximately eighteen months, she receives treatment consisting of drugs, therapy and analysis. During her period of confinement, she meets several other young women, who are also receiving various forms of treatment for disparate mental illnesses. Toward the end of her stay Kaysen receives a marriage proposal, which she accepts. The memoir concludes with a retrospective reevaluation of the time period and topics presented.

The presentation of events within the memoir is not chronological, although most events are placed in a more-or-less chronological order. References to future events are occasional while references to prior events are fairly frequent. Specific dates are often omitted and the narrative construction makes the ordering of events and the...
(read more)