Girl Interrupted
The movie Girl interrupted is an interesting movie that delves into the psychology of multiple young girls in an in-house psychiatric facility. The two main characters in the movie are Susanna, played by Wynona Rider, and Lisa, played by Angelina Jolie. The movie is about the lives of the different girls who are in the in-patient facility and their particular disorders. The movie shows the patients going to where the files on each of them are kept and finding out what the psychiatrists had been writing about them, including their particular diagnoses. Susanna is the main character of the movie and is quite the afflicted individual. Susanna is diagnosed with borderline personality disorder by the psychiatrists at the facility and falls into deep denial about her diagnosis. She is a young and troubled girl who seems to fit the diagnoses of the psychiatrists extremely well. Another key character is the movie is Lisa who is a controlling individual who torments some of the other patients at times. Lisa is diagnosed as a sociopath, which is a form of anti-social personality disorder, by the psychiatrists and also seems to fit the diagnosis extremely well. There are also two extremely interesting minor characters in this movie that deserve mention. These two characters are the disfigured Polly, who had poured gasoline on her face and ignited it as a child, and the extremely depressive Daisy, who seems to have some severe depression and a possible eating disorder. Although these two characters were never formally diagnosed in the movie, their particular actions and issues speak worlds to the world of abnormal psychology and I ended up feeling the worst for in the movie. Susanna, Lisa, Polly, and Daisy all have very interesting but different problems and ties to abnormal psychology and the different disorders that can afflict certain individuals.
The first character to be diagnosed will be Susanna, the main character of the movie. Susanna was sent to the in-patient
References: Leichsenring, F. (n.d). Borderline personality disorder. Lancet (North American Edition), 377(9759), 74-84.
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Dir. James Mangold. (1999). Girl Interrupted. United States. Perf Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie