Running With Scissors: A Memoir

Augusten’s mother, Dierdre, is the prominent figure and influence in his life. She’s a multifaceted character who can be the light of his life or the reason that he suffers. Augusten doesn’t share the specifics of his mother’s mental health condition in his book, but he does refer to her as having unpredictable and severe mood swings that can last for days and result in psychotic episodes when they become too intense. Dierdre spends most of her life untreated for this issue and as a result lashes out at her husband in front of Augusten. She and Norman have a mutually abusive relationship that soon ends in divorce when it becomes dangerously violent. During Augusten’s childhood and before he meets the Finches, he views his mother as a celebrity and someone worthy of worship. He watches her every move, emulating her and wanting to be just like her: “She climbs the stairs slowly, deliberately, reminding me of an actress on the way to the stage to accept her Academy Award. Her eyes are trained on me, her smile all mine” (4). Augusten is still too young to be aware that Dierdre’s confidence and bravado are largely the result of delusion. Although she’s a writer, her pieces are almost always rejected for publication.

Augusten’s relationship with his mother grows increasingly complex (highlighting the theme of The Complex Nature of Family Relationships) the more they involve themselves with the Finch family. Dr. Finch starts medicating Dierdre and seeing her daily for hours, creating an absolute dependence on him that takes years for Dierdre to break out of. She starts separating herself from Augusten slowly, leaving him with the Finches for days and weeks at a time. When she does see him, she seems distant and glossy-eyed: “She had come back for me, just like she said she would. Only, where was she?” (67). Dierdre feels oppressed as a woman and views her son as part of this oppression. After divorcing Norman, she begins dating women instead, becoming overtly sexual and unapologetic. She often goes on long monologues about this oppression, much of it the source of delusion or poor logic: “All my life, I have been oppressed. And all my life I have worked hard to fight this oppression. When I was a little girl living in Cairo, Georgia, I had a black nanny named Elsa who lived in a shack on the other side of town […] I knew it was wrong” (89). Eventually, Dierdre is so focused on herself and under such deep control by Dr. Finch that she gives Augusten up for adoption and leaves him to fend for himself with the Finches.

Dierdre’s mental health condition comes to a head when Augusten finds her sitting in a bath of broken glass and her own blood, and then she attacks Augusten by throwing glass dishes at him. Dr. Finch only increases the intensity of his “treatment” at this point, taking Dierdre to a motel along with several members of the family. She’s eventually rescued by Winnie, a waitress at the motel diner who suspects that Dr. Finch is abusing Dierdre. Dierdre later exposes Dr. Finch as overmedicating her, taking advantage of her emotionally, and on one occasion raping her. Augusten eventually fully disconnects from Dierdre.

A central figure in Running with Scissors, Dr. Finch is a round character first introduced as a strange and eclectic psychiatrist who eats cold hot dogs and has a masturbation room. In the end, he’s revealed as a doctor engaged in serious malpractice and illegal activity. Dr. Finch views himself as the patriarch of the family, and he’s worshipped in particular by his daughter Hope, who diverts to her father for answers to all life’s questions, big and small. When Augusten first meets Dr. Finch, he describes him as looking like Santa, with “jolly, red-faced cheeks and his easy smile” (23) and acting like him as well; Dr. Finch gives Augusten candy and balloons when he sees him, conditioning Augusten to warm up to and trust him. This strategy works, and Dr. Finch soon moves on to offering Augusten various random pills to quell his anxiety and help him fake an attempted death by suicide to get out of school. Dr. Finch is eventually exposed as an antagonist who is controlling Dierdre’s life, overmedicating her and other patients, and causing psychological harm to his patients and family.

Dr. Finch’s unconventional methods of practice are evident in his private life too. He deems his children fully independent at 13, which naturally causes them undue harm as they involve themselves in illegal relationships with adults, experience abuse, destroy their own house, and live in general squalor. In addition, Dr. Finch is misogynistic and neglectful towards his wife, Agnes, who occasionally argues with him but generally acts defeated and lifeless. He encourages his patients and family to release their anger by any means necessary, which results in regular verbal and physical squabbles that solve nothing. Perhaps most disturbingly, Dr. Finch houses his own patients, adopts some of them (including Neil and Augusten), and isolates others (like Dierdre) from their own families. All this causes undue harm that lasts well into their lives. After Winnie rescues Dierdre, she confesses to Augusten that Dr. Finch not only raped her but has been overmedicating her for years and emotionally abusing her. Augusten realizes that the person under whose care he spent years living wasn’t simply strange but was narcissistic and unstable.

Dr. Finch’s most loyal daughter is Hope, and is thus deemed his favorite child. She aspires to marry someone just like her father, because she views Dr. Finch as deeply evolved and intelligent. Hope works for her father as a receptionist, which is how Augusten first meets her. In addition, she’s the first member of the Finch family that Augusten meets, and on the surface she seems quite normal. Augusten and Hope initially relate over their mutual love of jewelry and Augusten’s curiosity about the patients and Dr. Finch’s practice. Although Hope is 28 when she meets 12-year-old Augusten, the two of them bond quickly.

For the first couple of years that Augusten knows and interacts with the Finch family, Hope seems the most stable and someone Augusten can count on. She’s always ready to help in times of crisis and keeps a cool head when one of her father’s patients is breaking down; Augusten describes her as being “like a paramedic for the psychologically collapsed” (234). However, Hope lives amid chaos and disorder, and she copes with it by playing it off as normal. This is perhaps most evident when Dr. Finch starts talking to God through his bowel movements, and Hope is eager to not only scoop them out of the toilet bowl for him but to assist him in his readings.

Hope begins to mentally deteriorate in parallel with her father, revealing the depth of her dependency on him and how much she relies on him for her own stability. As Dr. Finch loses patients and starts having trouble with the IRS, Hope begins scratching her head incessantly, causing psoriasis. In addition, she has a delusion in which she dreams that her cat, Freud, is asking for her help in dying. Although everyone else seems aware that the cat is perfectly healthy, they allow Hope to trap it under a laundry basket for days until it dies. Hope lies next to the cat, keeping it company. In this moment, Hope reveals that she isn’t as “normal” as she initially appeared.

A daughter of Dr. Finch, Natalie becomes Augusten’s closest friend and ally while he lives with the Finches. She’s a round character who changes and matures alongside Augusten. He feels like he and Natalie are similar in many ways: Both want to be important when they grow up, both have a desire to leave the place where they are and find something better, and they both have experience with abusive older men taking advantage of them. Augusten writes, “This is what bonds us, Natalie and me. We are living in the same madhouse and have gone through the same mad thing and have our bad, ugly loves” (142). When the chaos becomes too overwhelming at the Finch house, Augusten and Natalie often disappear together, going for walks, seeing movies, and finding out what they’re capable of. On one such occasion, Natalie and Augusten practice their singing skills together and perform for a group of patients at the psychiatric hospital. When one of the patients spits on them, Natalie spits back, showing her unwillingness to take abuse from anyone.

In addition, Natalie pushes Augusten to be more than he currently is and to have confidence in his ability to become a writer. She believes that he could easily write a book using the events and people from their lives, and that’s exactly what he later does. Near the novel’s conclusion, Augusten and Natalie go to visit the Smith College campus that Natalie hopes to attend. They walk underneath the waterfall there, and it proves an emotionally bonding experience that gives both of them the push they need to break free and begin new lives together. Soon, they move out of the Finch home together. Not long after, however, Dierdre accuses Dr. Finch of malpractice and rape, and Natalie forces Augusten to choose between his mother and the Finches. Augusten chooses neither and disconnects from Natalie and everyone else, going out on his own to find out who he is.

The 33-year-old adopted son of the Finch family, Neil becomes Augusten’s illegal and abusive boyfriend shortly after they meet. Neil seems forward and overly friendly at first, but Augusten is naive and doesn’t see this as a warning sign. Soon, Neil rapes Augusten, telling him that it’s just part of being gay. Augusten is damaged by the experience. He finds sex with Neil deeply uncomfortable but allows Neil to use him this way because he thrives on the attention Neil gives him. Augusten has always wanted to feel important and powerful, and Neil makes him feel that way. Additionally, Augusten relies on Neil because Neil is the only gay person Augusten knows.

Augusten is only 13 when he becomes involved with Neil, and his mother doesn’t object, believing that he should be free to be himself. Dr. Finch warns Augusten that Neil has deep-rooted problems and should be avoided, but Augusten ignores him. The only person who truly opposes Augusten and Neil’s relationship is Agnes, but since people never take her seriously, she rarely speaks up about it. Neil’s affectionate neediness soon becomes total dependence on Augusten. He even tells Augusten, “If you left me, I’d kill myself” (198), and Augusten is too young to know how to deal with Neil’s attachment. Augusten resents Neil for being so emotionally manipulative, but he doesn’t let this override his need for companionship. In the end, Neil decides to leave on his own accord, and once he's gone, Augusten never hears from him again.

Dr. Finch’s wife, Agnes, is described as “the cleaning lady” (56) because of her static nature as an obedient and worn-down housewife. Agnes does little else aside from sweeping, often the same spot for hours, and engaging in what Dr. Finch refers to as “motherminding”: “Everyone in the house was paranoid about being seen as a mothermind. And Agnes was the biggest one of all. The Anti-Christ of mental health and emotional maturity” (189). Agnes began her life as “an attractive and traditional Catholic girl” (99), but after decades of living with Dr. Finch and attempting to raise his ruthless children, she disengaged from reality for the most part and keeps to herself. When Agnes isn’t cleaning or tending to the various patients who live in the house (and often abuse her), she’s watching television or nagging her children. Often, Agnes’s nagging is warranted, as she tries to control their behavior when it gets out of control; however, it has no effect, and they often simply tell her to “shut up” and call her names. Agnes is equally abused by her husband, who has no regard for her feelings, has several mistresses she doesn’t consent to, and often laughs in her face when she becomes upset, making a spectacle of her: “Hope! Your mother is having a fit of hysteria. It’s spectacular!” (100). Highlighting the theme of The Illusion of “Normal,” Agnes exemplifies how this illusion becomes increasingly difficult to uphold the further one sinks into an environment of chaos.

Augusten’s father, Norman, is a math professor who works long hours, and when he comes home, he’s exhausted and distant, often drinking in the basement alone. Norman exemplifies the theme of The Illusion of “Normal.” Augusten describes his father as a “highly functional alcoholic professor” (12) because Norman is skilled at creating this illusion. As a child, Augusten desperately craves attention from his father, but Norman doesn’t have the emotional capacity to provide it. The only activity that they do together is take the garbage to the dump, and Augusten learns to love the smell of garbage because it reminds him of spending time with his father. Norman is an emotionally cold person and reacts poorly to Dierdre’s psychotic episodes, often making her symptoms worse and escalating the situation through anger. At one point, Norman attempts to strangle Dierdre, and she pushes him into the dishwasher, causing him to fall over and bleed. Augusten bears witness to this event and countless others, and in this way, Norman contributes to Augusten’s jaded outlook on relationships and his desperate need for attention from adult male figures. This need later emerges in his abusive and illegal relationship with Neil.