Psychoanalyzing Susanna: A Look at Girl - Essay Sample

Introduction

Psychoanalysis is a method used in investigating unconscious mental processes by bringing about the relation of conscious and unconscious minds. Through Psychoanalysis, Freud argues that childhood sexuality, conflicts in early stages of development, and motives are a result of the developmental process that starts from childhood through the stages of oral, anal, and phallic. In the book, Girl Interrupted these aspects are brought out through the primary character, Susanna.

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Girl, Interrupted is a memoir of a woman who had suffered from Borderline Personality Disorder. The writer of the Memoir, Susanna Kaysen, decided to write about her life as a mentally disabled person to bring light to life confinement. Before she could start writing, she needed an attorney to help her access her hospital health records so that she can use it in compiling her story. As a girl, the author was taken into a health facility to make her better. "Then he began to tell me what I might be thinking." "Of course, I was sad and puzzled. I was eighteen, it was spring, and I was behind bars" Susanna had done questionable things in her life that suggested that she had a mental illness. However, how she represents herself does not indicate that she was insane. Susanna is accused of having an illicit affair with her teacher of English, a reason she gives for not doing so well in Biology compared to other subjects. She, however, graduated from high school and has no plans for her future. She finds herself in a health facility for attempting suicide. Susanna swallows a bottle of aspirin with vodka but denied having done the same. When she is at the hospital, she has a bruise on her wrist that she can explain their cause. When she gets to the health facility, she only intends to stay for a couple of weeks but finds herself stuck, therefore 18 months. After getting better, she is discharged, and she finds it hard to fit into the society that was always her because of her history.

Freud's definition of one's ego is that it is a part of the mind that brings the id to reality, thus acting as the referee between id the super-ego. Susanna had a borderline personality disorder, which makes her externally lost and internally conflicting with who she is. People with Borderline Disorder have instable relationships with their families and people around them, which come out through their reactions. Also, such people feel abandoned and rejected. When people with the disorder want to get the attention of family and friends, they resort to suicide or suicidal threats as a way of manipulating people. Suicidal thoughts are impulses that are brought about by depression at its extreme. Also, people with such disorders express strong desires for love and sexuality as a way of seeking to belong. All these affect Susanna significantly, in addition to other symptoms of the disorder. At the start of the book, Susanna attempts suicide because she couldn't control her impulses. Because she craves for the attention, she tries to overdose on a bottle of aspirin with vodka.

The instinctive and primitive component of personality is called Id, which consists of inborn traits such as sex life and Eros (libido). Susanna's sexuality comes out when she gets involved in a sexual affair with a teacher that lands her into problems. She only sought to do what made her satisfied oblivious of the consequences.) The id is about impulses and how they control a person's behavior; this part of psyche responds directly to our basic needs, urges, and desires. In the memoir, Susanna never wants to go to college. She also detaches herself from others, and she mentions them as if they are just some characters from a book. She is never concerned about their troubles or unhappiness. To her, they are only shadows. At the hospital, she goes through some episodes of conscious lapse when she is worried that she was not a real person, but just skin which brought in her the urge to cut her up and to confirm if she was indeed a real person. Susanna says, "Something also was happening to my perceptions of people. When I looked at someone's face, I often did not maintain an unbroken connection to the concept of a face. Once you start parsing a face, it's a peculiar item: squishy, pointy, with lots of air vents and wet spots. This was the reverse of my problem with patterns. Instead of seeing too much meaning, I didn't see any meaning".

The super-ego involves societal morals and values that people learn from parents, siblings, and people, which develops during the early stages of life between 3-5 years. The function of the super-ego is to put under control the impulses bought about by the Id. The super-ego has two components, that is, the consciousness versus the perfect self. When the Id wrongs, the super-ego develops guilty emotions. Who one wants to become, determines how they treat people in society and your plans, such as career aspirations. Susanna does not seem to care about any of this. She gets in trouble with her parents because she is a deviant, and she cannot help herself out of it.

Susanna does not comfort the expectations of society, which leads to an identity crisis. She is confused about who she is and, at some point, confesses she is just a bundle of skin. "He started asking me," "What are you thinking?" "I never knew what to say." "My head was empty, and I liked it that way." She insists on her need for an x-ray to see her body. Susanna bites deep into her hand, and her friends had to rescue her before she could injure her hand. Susanna is supposed to join college after high school, but she doesn't want this either, because she finds it hard to confirm. Suzanna follows her wishes of wanting to do writing, an action that displeases her mother. She says," I do not want to end up like my mother" Feelings of shame and guilt make her react the way she does.