Character Analysis of Lisa Rowe in 'Girl Interrupted'

Girl Interrupted (Mangold, 1999) is a movie about life inside a mental institution. It shows the story of a group of young woman and their battles with mental illness. Lisa Rowe is a character played by Angelina Jolie. She is a twenty-year-old permanent patient who was admitted when she was twelve. Rowe has been diagnosed as a sociopath or anti-social personality disorder. She has escaped from the institution multiple times since she was admitted. Rowe is a perfect example of Erik Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development. She also has to cope with the illness and all the challenges that brings her, like understand her diagnosis and following her therapists’ recommendations. Lisa’s diagnosis is a very serious one, and it has strong repercussions …show more content…
She is very dominating over the other girls in the ward. She shows this as much as she possibly can, her behavior is very egocentric. When she snaps her fingers and someone lights her cigarette. She does this so she can gain feelings of superiority, she wants control over something since she has no control over her condition. She can’t control where she sleeps, what she eats, or even who she talks to most of the time. Her conditions require her to make do with the options she has laid out in front of her. She conditions the weakly minded patients at the ward so she can have her ego fed. They all do what she wants when she wants it done. They are almost more scared of her than friends with her, but this is as close to a friendship as Lisa can get. No stable minded individual can put up with her dominance very long. Her disorder will begin to take light and people can’t tolerate it, she is mean and rude and dishonest, all behaviors that people do not like. At one point Lisa gets angry and says to a patient, “ You think you’re free? I’m free! You don’t know what freedom is! I’m free. I can breathe. And you will choke on your average mediocre life!” She lives day by day trying so hard to believe this, she lives in a delusion that makes it acceptable for her to behave the way she does. She tried to look at her illness as a reward or a gift that she was born …show more content…
He believed that every developmental stage you would have some sort of crisis, and then react in a certain way. This reaction would either affect you positively or negatively in your developmental process. Erikson believed in five stages under the age of eighteen and 3 stages in adult life making a total of eight stages. The first stage is learning to trust or mistrust this is at 0 to 1 ½ years old. He says at this stage the infant is uncertain about what is happening in the world around them. The second stage is autonomy vs. shame at age 1 ½ to 3. The child is starting to realize they have their own skills and talents that they can apply to get what they want. The third stage is initiative vs guilt ages 3 to 5. This stage is when they begin to make up their own thoughts and ideas, they begin to think for themselves. The fourth stage is industry vs inferiority at ages 5 to 12. This stage is when they begin to look to their peers rather than their parent for approval. They begin to gain their own opinions and they try to win the approval of society. This stage is where it can start to affect the child negatively. “If the child cannot develop the specific skill they feel society is demanding then they may develop a sense of inferiority.” (simplepsychology.org). Now the fifth stage is the one that Lisa Rowe is stuck in, identity vs role confusion age 12 to 18. Erikson believed the child needs to learn