Lunatics are similar to designated hitters. Often an entire family is crazy, but since an entire family can't go into the hospital, one person is des… - Susanna Kaysen

A representative conversation with Dr. Wick: “Good morning. It has been decided that you were compulsively promiscuous. Would you like to tell me about that?” “No.” This is the best of several bad responses, I’ve decided. “For instance, the attachment to your high school English teacher.” Dr. Wick always uses words like attachment. “Uh?” “Would you like to tell me about that?” “Um. Well. He drove me to New York.” That was when I realized he was interested. He brought along a wonderful vegetarian lunch for me. “But that wasn’t when it was.” “What? When what was?” “When we fucked.” (Flush.) “Go on.” “We went to the Frick. I’d never been there. There was this Vermeer, see, this amazing painting of a girl having a music lesson—I just couldn’t believe how amazing it was—” “So when did you—ah—when was it?” Doesn’t she want to hear about the Vermeer? That’s what I remember. “What?” “The—ah—attachment. How did it start?” “Oh, later, back home.” Suddenly I know what she wants. “I was at his house. We had poetry meetings at his house. And everybody had left, so we were just sitting there on the sofa alone. And he said, ‘Do you want to fuck?’ ” (Flush.) “He used that word?” “Yup.” He didn’t. He kissed me. And he’d kissed me in New York too. But why should I disappoint her? This was called therapy.

People ask, How did you get in there? What they really want to know is if they are likely to end up in there as well. I can't answer the real question. All I can tell them is, It's easy. Most people pass over incrementally, making a series of perforations in the membrane between here and there until an opening exists. And who can resist an opening?

Every few months Torrey’s parents flew from Mexico to Boston to harangue her. She was crazy, she had driven them crazy, she was malingering, they couldn’t afford it, and so forth. After they left Torrey would give a report in her tired drawl. “Then Mom said, ‘You made me into an alcoholic,’ and then Dad said, ‘I’m going to see you never get out of this place,’ and then they sort of switched and Mom said, ‘You’re nothing but a junkie,’ and Dad said, ‘I’m not going to pay for you to take it easy in here while we suffer.’ ” “Why do you see them?” Georgina asked. “Oh,” said Torrey. “It’s how they show their love,” said Lisa. Her parents never made contact with her. The nurses agreed with Lisa. They told Torrey she was mature for agreeing to see her parents when she knew they were going to confuse her. Confuse was the nurses’ word for abuse.