Citation

Kavaler S. Am. J. Psychoanal. 1986; 46(4): 336-344.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1986, Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis, Publisher Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

3548444

Abstract

Repeated object loss drove Sylvia Plath to create, and what she created were her greatest, and best-known poems, collected in the book Ariel. Yet the compulsion to create alternated with the compulsion to destroy. Her suicidal impulses were as intense as her poetic impulses (see Bach, 1985, on the "Marquis de Sade"). How these two contrasting impulses counter-balanced each other, until self-destruction took the lead, is the story of Sylvia Plath. What remains with us is the puzzle of her despair. This puzzle can only be pieced together by looking at the internal object relations of the father-daughter bond, which germinated like a ghost and spector within Sylvia Plath's soul.

Language: en