Books / Lived experience, memoir & fiction
Girl, Interrupted
Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted (1993) recounts her stay at McLean Hospital as a teenager. Combining recollection with hospital records, the memoir questions psychiatric diagnosis and explores life on the ward.
Book details
Author of listed edition: Susanna Kaysen
Edition: Vintage paperback (1994)
Publisher: Vintage
Edition year: 1994
First published: 1993
Language and origin: English (United States)
ISBN: 9780679746041
Form and genre: Memoir, Fiction & Lived Experience
Level: Introductory
Historical era: 1980–2009 · Evidence-Based, Trauma & Integrative Era
Covers: Kaysen’s account of life on a psychiatric ward and relationships with other patients; Hospital records alongside her recollections; A retrospective examination of psychiatric diagnosis and its social context; The painting Girl Interrupted at Her Music as a source for the title
APA 7th reference: Kaysen, S. (1994). Girl, interrupted. Vintage. (Original work published 1993)
What it is & historical context
Girl, Interrupted, first published in 1993, recounts Kaysen’s hospitalization at McLean Hospital in the late 1960s. The edition listed here is the 1994 Vintage paperback.
Core clinical themes & arguments
Kaysen places copies of her medical records alongside her memories of the ward. She reflects on the language of psychiatric diagnosis and on the relationship between social expectations and judgments about mental health. Borderline personality disorder became a formal DSM diagnosis in 1980, after her hospitalization; later diagnostic criteria should not be projected back onto the 1960s.
Clinical practice, reception & legacy
The memoir portrays relationships among patients and the experience of psychiatric hospitalization. It offers a personal perspective rather than a representative account of all patients or a clinical guide to diagnosis.
Reader level & educational scope
Catalogued at an introductory reading level within lived experience, memoir & fiction (memoir, fiction & lived experience). This entry summarises published bibliographic, historical, and peer-reviewed records for educational orientation; it does not provide personal clinical advice, diagnosis, or treatment recommendations.
Paired academic and clinical scholarship
Paired work: Through the Looking Glass: Women and Borderline Personality Disorder (Dana Becker, 1997)
Reference: Becker, D. (1997). Through the looking glass: Women and borderline personality disorder. Westview Press / Routledge.
A study of gender and the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder, providing a further perspective on questions raised by the memoir.
Source-mapped claims and evidence notes
Claim 1: Kaysen combines recollections of her hospitalization with copies of her medical records. (The memoir presents an individual perspective on psychiatric care.) [Source 1: Kaysen, S. (1994). Girl, interrupted. Vintage. (Original work published 1993).]
Claim 2: Borderline personality disorder entered the DSM as a formal diagnosis in DSM-III in 1980. (This was after Kaysen’s hospitalization in the 1960s.) [Source 3: Gunderson, J. G. (2009). Borderline personality disorder: Ontogeny of a diagnosis. American Journal of Psychiatry, 166(5), 530–539.]
Sources and inspection notes
Kaysen, S. (1994). Girl, interrupted. Vintage. (Original work published 1993).
Supports: Publisher description of the memoir, its use of medical records, and bibliographic details of the 1994 Vintage paperback.
Supports: Pending verification: Clinical and sociological analysis of gender bias in the diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder.
Supports: History of borderline personality disorder and its inclusion in DSM-III in 1980.