Running with Scissors, by Agusten Burroughs - I'm reading this book with my jaw dropping [View all]
I never saw the movie, but if this is the bio of Augusten Burroughs (with the names changed, of course), he suffered the great misfortune of being surrounded only by complete psychotics from the time he was born until he finally made his way into the world on his own.
It would be an understatement to say that the family his psychotic mother handed him over to, and who adopted him (the family of her shrink), was completely insane. In fact, that family went beyond insane. The daughters were outright nuts, and you'd have to read it to believe it. The shrink/adoptive father moved psychotic patients into his home, allowed pedophilia to go on, the stay-at-home mom permitted the house to be a filth-pot like those homes that end up shut down by the health department, the entire family was a den of psychoses, beginning with the psychiatrist, whose license was eventually (thank goodness) taken away and could no longer practice.
However, I think the whackiest thing in this story is the fact that this psychiatrist's family actually got upset when they read Burrough's descriptions of them (again, with different names) in Running with Scissors, then sued him and gave interviews to the national media. If that'd been me, I'd have changed my name, never uttered a peep, and gotten myself a whole new identity. I would never have allowed anyone to know I grew up in that. ew.
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