For
centuries, "misfits" have been institutionalized as "insane."
In late medieval France, beggars were institutionalized as
"insane" so that they would not clutter the open markets.
In industrial democracies, a more scientific-sounding vocabulary
was developed to accomplish the same objective -- to isolate
nonconformists lacking support from family and friends. In
Girl, Interrupted director James Mangold adapts
to the screen the 1993 autobiography of Susanna Kaysan (played
by Winona Ryder), whose malady in 1967 at the age of eighteen
was having sex with a married man, overdosing on aspirin,
failing to apply to admission to college along with her prep
school peers, having few friends her age, being an embarrassment
to her parents, and preferring to pursue a career as a writer.
Upon graduation, her parents leave her no choice but to commit
herself to Claymoore, an upscale private mental institution,
where she is diagnosed as having a "borderline personality
disorder," which she is brainwashed into believing is an accurate
description of her own mental state. After a period of adjustment
into the routine of pills, talk therapy, and official as well
as unofficial activities, her boyfriend suddenly shows up
to take her away, but she is not to be One Who Flew
over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975). Instead, her previous
experiences with unstable men counsels her into preferring
to remain a prisoner, since she is drawn to the companionship
and drama of her new female friends. Similar to The
Snake Pit (1948), she eventually comes to the conclusion
that she is sane in an institution that creates insanity;
according to the tagline, "Sometimes the only way to stay
sane is to go a little crazy." Through the thoughtful counsel
of nurse Valerie (played by Whoppi Goldberg), she discerns
exactly what she needs to say to head psychotherapist Dr.
Wick (played by Vanessa Redgrave) and to a panel of psychotherapists
so that she can be released, as she is after eighteen months,
when she embarks on the career of writing that she sought
all along. However, the import of the film is less about Susanna's
unfortunate plight and more about the validity of the current
theory of social constructionism, which in this case argues
that labels are invented by persons in authority in order
to disempower nonconformists. Each girl at Claymoore has one
thing in common -- running afoul of adult hypocrisy. Their
affluent families on the outside do not want them to leave,
preferring to institutionalize children whose presence in
polite society would unmask serious adult indiscretions. And
Claymoore, to survive financially, goes along with the charade
by inventing maladies that have no cure, refusing to deal
with the real issues that bring the girls for "treatment."
As a backdrop, television news covers the turmoil of the late
1960s, thereby implying that society was itself falling apart,
as if the girls and their parents were both victims of societal
forces. But the portrayal of the unhealthy state of the art
of psychotherapy some thirty years ago is itself out of date.
Nowadays, Freudian psychotherapy has been discredited, and
medical researchers increasingly are finding that many behavior
disorders are not mental in origin but instead can be treated
pharmacologically with considerable success. Moreover, the
civil rights movement now protects those who are committed
to mental institutions by insisting on hearings in which psychiatrists
are only expert witnesses in judicial proceedings where those
who have been diagnosed with behavior disorders are represented
by independent attorneys. Nevertheless, the same hocus pocus
can operate at a more sophisticated level, since the fate
of individuals who lack a measure of self-control acceptable
to family and friends can be decided by judges deferring to
psychiatrists, who in turn may have no alternative but to
entrust care to social workers. When social workers are on
a power trip, as illustrated by the shocking film Ladybird,
Ladybird (1994), the results can be surreal. MH
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