TAYLOR
They cut him. . you cut up his brain, you bloody baboon!. . you cut out his memory, you took his identity!
And Taylor isn’t even suspected of being crazy, but he’s a problem, and the same thing is in store for him, Dr. Zaius warns, the “experimental surgery on the speech centers, on the brain. Eventually a kind of living death.”
Meanwhile Therapist Cathy is telling me, Yes, we can try this, but she doesn’t let me leave until we make a pact: No dangerous behaviors without calling her, first. Agreed, and we plan for me to see her three times a week. I do not mention that I have already been researching suicide — A+, homework-doing student that I am — that I already own a copy of Final Exit, already have purchased a pack of old-fashioned razor blades.
But I don’t consider buying the razor blades a dangerous behavior. I just need them to make those tiny little practice slices in my thighs and forearms, just a warm-up, just to see if I can feel anything, and to see if I’ll be able to do it when the time comes. I rehearse and rehearse: Mere kitten scratches. The real time comes, I decide, a month or so later during an inexplicably sobbing-at-two-in-the-morning fit of hysteria; I pick up a fresh blade, try, can’t do it. Can’t do it for real. So I now have to confront my inability to make a deep and assertive-enough slice to offer escape, and that inadequacy makes me paroxysmic. I can’t do anything right. What a fake I am. What a wimp, a fucking fraud. Maybe a gun. Maybe poison, jumping off a building, something honest and true, something that once committed to, I can’t back out of. Okay, I figure, I should call Therapist Cathy, that’s the rule we agreed on, and I don’t break rules or agreements because I am such a fucking Good Girl.
But I hear Janet’s beautiful, resonant, cautioning voice:
JANET
Talk of suicide must always be taken seriously. Such talk came readily to me as a shortcut to ensure action.
I don’t want to ensure action, I realize. That’s why I can’t cut. Action means hospital. I think hospital and I see pills and needles and too many shuffling people in bathrobes. I see leather restraints on cotlike beds and stained ceiling tiles and drooling and basement rooms. I feel the conductive gel on my temples. I see Ratched and well-meaning Montgomery Clift and a sign that reads PSYCHIATRIC WARD, where Randle, Frances, Catherine, Olivia, and Janet are waiting their turn for the machine. I hear: Tap. I think hospital and I hear Charlton Heston screaming, “You took his identity!”
And that’s my image of hospital: It’s the place where they steal away what makes you human. Where they silence not only your voice so you cannot tell your story; they silence your brain so you cannot even know what your story is.
I put the blade away and get back into bed. I’m not going that crazy tonight.
At the beginning of Girl, Interrupted, pretty, smart, twentysomething Susanna Kaysen is getting her stomach pumped after an overdose of aspirin, while she keeps swearing to everyone that she wasn’t really trying to kill herself.7 Her parents and doctors convince her she needs “a really good rest”; she signs herself into a mental institution, which, again, just shocks me — doesn’t anyone ever realize what signing those papers means? I was nervous to see this movie; I’m not a convict guy or a 1930s movie star or a housewife or a New Zealander, but I am Susanna-like, a middle-class young woman with a nice life and no apparent problems and a history of minueting with suicide. And Susanna’s also a writer — like me, like Janet, like housewife Olivia in The Snake Pit. Writers are starting to seem overrepresented as crazy people, I think, although it ultimately was Janet’s salvation; I suppose, like arsenic, it can be both poison and cure.
On her way to the institution, Claymoore, the cabbie tells Susanna:
CABBIE
You look normal.
SUSANNA
I’m sad.
CABBIE
(shrugging)
Well, everyone’s sad.
And he’s right, I think. But when does one person’s sadness become another person’s lunacy?
One significant difference between Susanna and me, of course, is that Susanna actually swallowed those pills, which puts her in a whole different league — she’s the real, impressive thing. But if she’s crazier than I am, fellow patient Crazy Lisa (early, unhinged Angelina Jolie) is way crazier than either of us, and puts us both to shame; Lisa is the Randle P. McMurphy of the place, the charismatic, glamorous wacko who brings with her the edge, the danger, the restraints and injections. Lisa takes Susanna under her wing, showing her how to fake-swallow those meekness-inducing pills. She even steals her psych file for her, where Susanna reads that she’s been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, defined by:
SUSANNA
(reading)
“. . an instability of self-image, relationships and mood, uncertainty about goals, impulsive activities that are self-damaging, such as casual sex. Social contrariness, and a generally pessimistic attitude are observed.”
(to Lisa)
Well, that’s me.
LISA
That’s everybody.
The Crazy Girl is the voice of reason — if that’s the definition, who doesn’t have Borderline Personality Disorder? At least sometimes. We should all be in Claymoore. We should all keep Camarillo on speed dial. The arbitrary and generic nature of this labeling reminds me of Janet Frame, Schizophrenic; it confirms every fear I’ve ever had about behaving yourself, and being very, very careful not to sully your permanent record.
The movie offers lots of evidence how normal Susanna actually is, in comparison with all the other women there, and she finally decides she wants to leave. But, as the Chief Doctor points out, “You signed yourself into our care. We decide when you leave.”
However, the Doctor also indicates the decision, ultimately, is Susanna’s; she needs to decide between two courses of action, namely: Am I sane? Or, Am I crazy? Susanna says those aren’t courses of action, but the Doctor insists:
CHIEF DOCTOR
They can be, for some. Will you stay or go? It’s the choice of your life. How much will you indulge in your flaws?
This takes me aback, confuses me — it’s paradoxically empowering and chastising. I like the confirmation that there’s an element of choice here, that Susanna can reseize control of herself, choose just how far along on the crazy continuum she will go. But I’m embarrassed by the categorizing of depression or emotional fragility as an exaggerated form of self-pity or weakness. A flaw. It echoes Olivia’s vengeful, sadistic Nurse: “All you have is an exalted view of your own importance!” Meanwhile, Lisa, the legitimately Crazy One, has run off on a destructive rampage, been dragged back, given electroshock (off-screen, it isn’t her movie), and is roaming around shell-shocked with the twitches and the drool.
Susanna’s real showdown/reality check comes during a confrontation with her head nurse, Valerie, a no-bullshit Whoopi Goldberg: