Durchgeknallt

I wasn't convinced that I was crazy, but I worried that I was. Some say, to have a conscious opinion about that subject is a sign for mental health but I'm not so sure.

I've seen the movie adaptation of “Girl, Interrupted” before, years ago, and I liked it a lot. Ever since then I wanted to read the source material. I have a soft spot for stories set in psychiatric hospitals anyway.
So, I borrowed this copy of the book from a friend and started reading in January of 2020. Funnily enough, when I began reading this book, I was at the tail end of a psychiatric stay myself.
I'm not sure what I expected from the book after already being familiar with the film, but I was a bit underwhelmed and after the first 100 pages, the book began to lie dormant on my shelf for about a year and a half. I finally picked it up again recently and finished it.

It was actually hard for me to see a lot of similarities between the movie and the book. They are both very different shades of media. The film is streamlined, dramatic, and has a clear thread. Kaysen's book however is more like a choppy collection of individual memories and impressions of her real stay at a clinic in the 60s.
It has some very interesting observations and some entertaining moments involving the other patients. But overall, it was quite repetitive and at points even a little bit annoying thanks to the adolescent characters, some of which very clearly like to be bitchy just for the sake of being bitchy and to mess around with the hospital staff. That sort of stuff can get grating for me personally.
I was also kind of mission the point at moments. I guess the main intention of this book is for Kaysen to chronicle her memories with 60s style therapy and coming to terms with what it means to have a mental illness including the stigmas. It does that pretty well at points, mainly in the beginning and end of the book, when it is the most reflective. But in-between, a lot of the text is rather mundane and doesn't hold that much for interest. There are fascinating little moments like the whole “where are my bones” breakdown, but there is also a lot of mundane chitchatting and bickering between the young adults here. There isn't much of a consistent storyline here, as the movie might have you believe.

So, I'm pretty conflicted about this book as a whole. It has value and I wouldn't say it's a bad piece of literature. Especially the final few pages where Kaysen dives into her actual diagnosis for the first time properly, was very interesting. There are also a few good bits and pieces about the relationship between patient and therapist, and even though this true story took place in the 60s where therapy was still pretty awful and very different from today, there are details here that still ring true to this day and that even I could find similarities to my own experiences with psychiatric hospitals.
Though I gotta say, I've read more interesting and better-structured books about first experiences with therapy and the isolated life in a clinic before, so this kind of pales in comparison. I got more out of Vizzini's “It's Kind Of A Funny Story”, for example. Which coincidentally is also based on the author's real experiences.

It's a decent book with some clear merits but I'm far from loving it. In my opinion, this is one of those rare cases where the movie adaptation is actually better.