Honestly, I really don’t remember seeing the movie based on this book, that is why I picked it up. Figured it would be good to listen to the book in it’s original form. But it turned out that I must have seen the movie at some point or seen a similar movie as the beginning of the book sounded very familiar and the descriptions and even the names of the characters sounded familiar. I guess I’d have to see the movie again to really recall if I’d seen it before!
Anyhow, on to the book… Susanna Kaysen’s description of her time spent in a mental hospital is definitely intriguing. Her description makes one question the line between sanity and insanity. Between reality and psychosis. The descriptions of the characters at the hospital is first class. Their behavior, their qirks, their likes and dislikes as seen through the author’s eyes exemplifies the flailings of the mind. The experience of the author and her fellow “patients” at the “hospital” really makes one question the virtues of psychotherapy.
Her dissection of her diagnosis of having a borderline personality disorder as defines in the Diagnosis and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) published by the American Psychiatric Association really makes one wonder as to whether there is any merit what to ever to psychiatry and especially to getting a “diagnosis” based on statistics and perceptions of the person’s behavior. To some extent the lines the author quoted from the DSM diagnosis did not seem to far of from the open-ended horoscopes or reading of the shamans, astrologers and psychics which are always open to interpretation with very little objectivity.
My biggest complaint with the book was that it lacked continuity. I guess my bias for structure and flow impeded my ability to simply go with the flow of the authors words. I tried to tie the ends together and bridge the when sometimes it’s better not to even attempt it. Though I liked the book, unfortunately, it didn’t move me as deeply as I would have expected. My expectations were probably too high. So the most I can give this book is a partial thumbs up.
