Part one of term paper
In "," the novelist Susanna Caisson, 43, uses a series of vignettes to describe her experiences as a teen-age mental patient in 1967-68. Using herself as a troubled - and troubling - example, Kaysen demonstrates with humor the severe problems with diagnosis, the sensation of psychiatric hospitalization and the callousness of even the most upp ...

Part two of term paper
... Caisson's " incarceration" in McLennan Hospital in Belmont, Mass., by reputation one of the nation's best psychiatric hospitals, let off her family the difficulties of having to live for two years with this "borderline personality." As diagnosed by the clinician's bible, the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders," this condition could be the human condition, for it consists of "uncertainty about several life issues, such as self-image, sexual orientation, long-term goals or car ...