“Girl, Interrupted” by Susanna Kaysen: Are a suicide attempt that is “a form of murder” and concerns about “losing time” indicative of multiple personality?

This 1993 memoir was made into a 1999 movie starring Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie, who won an Oscar. It is about Kaysen’s 1967-9 psychiatric hospitalization on a ward for teenage girls at McLean Hospital, a place, according to the cover, which was renowned for its famous patients, including Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, James Taylor, and Ray Charles. Kaysen's discharge diagnosis was “Borderline Personality, Recovered.”

Although there is nothing in this book that is diagnostically definitive, two things are suggestive of multiple personality: the way Kaysen talks about her suicide attempt, and, separately, her concern about whether she might have had memory gaps. (Search “memory gaps.” It is a cardinal symptom of multiple personality and a recurrent subject in this blog.)

Suicide Attempt

In discussing her suicide attempt—an overdose with fifty aspirin—she says the following:

“Suicide is a form of murder—premeditated murder…” (p. 36).

“Actually, it was only part of myself I wanted to kill: the part that wanted to kill herself…” (p. 37).

This is a well-known multiple personality scenario in which a “persecutor” personality (search “persecutor”) attempts to kill the regular personality, because the latter is weak and dysfunctional.

Memory Gaps: “Losing Time”

The first episode is when Kaysen worries about whether her psychiatric evaluation had lasted only twenty minutes, as she recalled, or three hours, as the doctor claimed. She gathers documentary evidence, and figures out time lines, to prove that she was right. But the issue I’m raising is not whether she was right, but why she got so worked up about the issue. Perhaps this was not the first time that she might have had a memory gap, and she worried whether it meant she was crazy.

The second episode is when she goes to a dentist and gets a tooth pulled. Afterward, she says to the nurse, Valerie:

“I want to know how much time that was [in the dentist’s office],” I said. “See, Valerie, I’ve lost some time, and I need to know how much. I need to know” (p. 109). And she was so upset, she started crying.

Here she has used the classic metaphor that people with multiple personality often use about their memory gaps: losing time.

In conclusion, although I can’t diagnose multiple personality based on sketchy information about a person I’ve never met, this memoir may describe a kind of suicide attempt that is seen in multiple personality: the internal homicide, in which one personality attempts to kill another personality.

And this memoir does raise questions about memory gaps, a cardinal symptom of multiple personality. However, Kaysen never complained about memory gaps to her doctors at McLean Hospital, and they never asked her if she had any memory gaps, which is typical of most patients with multiple personality and most psychiatrists.

Susanna Kaysen. Girl, Interrupted. New York, Vintage Books/Random House, 1993/1994.