Citation

Gerevich J. Psychiatr. Hung. 2019; 34(2): 214-236.

Affiliation

Addiktologiai Kutato Intezet, Budapest, Hungary, E-mail: gerevichjozsef3@gmail.com.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Magyar Pszichiatriai Tarsasag)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

31417009

Abstract

To clarify the relationship between literature and psychiatry we can call on the help of the American-English writer Sylvia Plath, who was given electroconvulsive therapy and psychotherapy on a number of occasions for psychiatric illness and later took her own life. This study seeks an answer to five questions. Did Sylvia Plath suffer from psychiatric illness? Did she show signs of the bipolar triad (bipolar affective disorder, trait aggression, substance or behavioural dependence)? Did her activity as a writer have a therapeutic effect? What was the nature of her "confessionalism"? To what extent does her oeuvre reflect her life? Sylvia Plath very probably suffered from a psychiatric illness, namely bipolar 2 affective disorder. The unsuitable treatment of her illness and the interruption of intensive psychotherapy could have contributed to her early death. Together with the bipolar affective disorder, she was also characterised by serious dispositional aggression and emotional dependence. For her, writing was both a source of stress, because her dysthymia intensified her inhibitions, and at the same time self-healing and a self-fulfilling prophecy. The roots of her confessionalism can be found in her personality development suspended in the stage of becoming an adult, and the failure to work through her traumas. Unlike Goethe and Salinger who killed their heroes, having them commit suicide in The Sorrows of Young Werther and A Perfect Day for Bananafish, while both writers recovered from their crisis, Sylvia Plath described a positive development in The Bell Jar and in Ariel, her verse cycle, then put her head in the gas oven. Would she have stayed alive if she had followed the patterns of Goethe and Salinger?

Language: hu