Task about "girl, interrupted". First part.

Work in group:

Girl, Interrupted is a best-selling 1993 memoir by American author Susanna Kaysen, relating her experiences as a young woman in a psychiatric hospital in the 1960s after being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. The memoir's title is a reference to the Vermeer painting Girl Interrupted at her Music.

First of all


1. Did you know that people could smoke inside a hospital in the sixties?

2. Who was the president of USA in  1962?

3. When was he assassinated? Where?

4. What is the difference between the sixties in USA and in Spain?

The diagnosis

1. Do you remember the diagnosis of Susan (Winona Ryder)?

2. Did you recognise any cases of anorexia or other nutricional illnesses in the film?

3. Do you think that nowadays, a person with borderline personality disorder would be hospitalised?

4. Do you think that the pressures of her society and family are contributing factors to her illness?

5. Do you think that a person who attempts to comit suicide should go to a mental hospital?