Could modern psychiatry have saved Sylvia Plath?
Heather Clark’s new biography, Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, digs deep into the life and times of literary legend Sylvia Plath. It sheds light on the trajectory and treatment of her mental health condition and what role key interpersonal relationships played in exacerbating her depression.
Despite this biography’s many strengths, it did not address the mental health nuances that would help to demystify the mental health challenges Plath, her husband’s mistress, and, eventually, her son faced. (Her son Nicholas Hughes committed suicide in 2009 at the age of 47.)
Based on the details of Plath’s treatment during her short life, it’s not surprising that she ended up committing suicide in 1963 at the age of 31. Although much more is known about brain disorders since 1963, effective treatment still proves to be elusive for many.
This 900-page biography reviews page after page of her high school and college dates and diary, bank account deposits and withdrawals, and other mundane details. Why couldn’t it delve into relevant mental health research that might help ease the stigma surrounding mental health?
Jessica Ferri’s Los Angeles Times review of Red Comet, Think you know Sylvia Plath: Read this definitive new biography, explains the significance of the research that did make it into Red Comet, “Clark is the first biographer able to scan pages from the archive rather than take “hastily scribbled” notes on-site, and it shows. Details of family history, including her grandmother’s institutionalization for depression and the FBI’s investigation of her German father, appear for the first time here.”
Although I occasionally write poems, reading pages and pages of poems triggers migraine headaches. Sylvia Plath’s stunning novel The Bell Jar is what made me a fan. Below is a description of The Bell Jar I wrote within a previous blog, The Mystery of Suicide and L’Wren Scott:
The Bell Jar
Within the novel The Bell Jar, author Sylvia Plath insightfully described this progression of distorted thoughts. As her protagonist Esther becomes more and more depressed, her perceptions become darker and darker, and she further and further isolates herself. As the mental anguish Esther experiences becomes acute, it becomes painful to turn the page as Esther effectively builds a case for herself that suicide makes sense.
Sylvia Plath’s novel The Bell Jar portrays the progressive negative thinking and alienation of a young woman slipping deeper and deeper into depression and eventually psychosis. At times darkly humorous, the protagonist’s case for attempting suicide seems almost logical.
High sensitivity trait
About 20% of the population possesses the high sensitivity trait. I suspect Plath did too and considering this angle would offer more insight into her behavior and her artistry.
The ability to keenly observe and reflect and to notice what others can’t can be painful at times.
The following definition is from the website of Elaine Aron, research psychologist and author of The Highly Sensitive Person:
“The highly sensitive person (HSP) has a sensitive nervous system, is aware of subtleties in his/her surroundings, and is more easily overwhelmed when in a highly stimulating environment…. they process everything around them much more — reflect on it, elaborate on it, make associations.”
Sharper mental health lens
Sylvia Plath’s husband, England’s Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death in 1998, left Sylvia for another woman, Larissa, with whom he was having an affair while still married to Plath. Larissa’s behavior sounds exceptionally unstable for years, but her mental health is not speculated upon at all in Red Comet. Hughes then becomes involved with various women, abandons Larissa and their child, and Larissa kills herself and their young child.
A significant angle that is not adequately researched is the horrific electroshock treatment Plath experienced in 1953 during summer vacation from college. She was experiencing her first severe depression. I would have liked to have read more medical analysis of the possible damage it could have caused because her first suicide attempt occurred after the disastrous electroshock treatment. Now, sixty years later, electroshock therapy has been greatly improved.
Plath was prescribed various pharmaceuticals and the combination of them likely exacerbated her mental health condition. The effect they could have had is not explored.
Bipolar possibly
Since Plath’s death in 1963, there has been a lot of research into the treatment and dynamics of bipolar depression (also known as bipolar, bipolar disorder, and manic-depressive illness). It has frequently been speculated that Plath dealt with this condition, although, at the time, its treatment was not well established.
Through the years, I have read post-humous diagnoses of Plath’s mental health condition, including Psychiatric disorder of Sylvia Plath, a 2019 article whose abstract is published in PubMed.com. It was translated into English from its original publication in Psychiatra Hungarica. “Her major depression (without psychotic symptoms) recurred several times,” it states. That sentence puzzles me. How could attempting suicide not be diagnosed as psychotic depression?
The article offers a probable diagnosis, “There were histrionic, narcissistic and borderline features in her personality. The probable diagnoses of Plath were bipolar II. affective disorder and mixed personality disorder.”
If the biography had addressed that Plath most likely struggled with bipolar and personality disorders, then the way the events in her life played out would have made a lot more sense as would the harm the ineffective treatment caused her.
Postpartum factor
The postpartum factor was not adequately addressed either. Postpartum depression may last for years according to a 2020 article on the National Institute for Health’s website.
Plath committed suicide after having given birth to two children in rapid succession. She left behind a not quite 13-month-old son and a two-year daughter.
Malcolm Gladwell and coupling
The biography didn’t mention the coupling factor regarding Plath’s suicide that Malcolm Gladwell devoted an entire chapter to in his 2019 book Talking to Strangers (New York Times review). In February 1963, the suicide rate in London was in the midst of a significantly increased rate, because most homes in England and Wales received gas that contained carbon monoxide. During the sixties and seventies, this type of gas was phased out, and the suicide rate declined.
Other research shows that when you remove the easily accessible way to commit suicide, often those with suicidal tendencies don’t end up killing themselves. Gladwell argues that the rate of suicide is coupled to the ease in which it can be committed.
Tommy Raskind
Nearly 58 years later, depression still claims lives. Treatments are more effective than in Plath’s time, but there is still a long way to go as evidenced by the passing of 25-year-old Tommy Raskind. His Perfect Heart and Perfect Soul were not enough to save his life.
Sexism in the 50s and 60s
Ultimately, I have the same takeaway from reading Clark’s biography as I did from reading the Bell Jar for the second time in my early thirties. Given the mental health delivery system at the time, Sylvia Plath didn’t have a chance. Suicide was very likely to be her fate given her inability to manage the disordered thinking caused by depression or bipolar depression.
Despite the biography’s 900-page length, I don’t feel as if I got to know Sylvia Plath save for her formidable creative drive and work ethic.
However, I did walk away with a much better picture of the sexism and the elitism that played out in the 1950s and early 60s. My mother, who died in a car accident at 29 when I was three years old, graduated from Smith College in 1957 two years after Plath. This biography put into context the many stories about my mom her friends and my grandmother shared with me as I grew up and gave me an even greater appreciation of my mother. From all accounts, she rejected the elitism and remained humble and open-hearted.
I would love to read a collection of the short stories Plath published, but my online search only turned up Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams. Other collections included diary excerpts and letters, which I am not interested in reading.
Related links
· Bookshop.org “Bookshop is an online bookstore with a mission to financially support local, independent bookstores.”
· Los Angeles Times article Commemorating the 50th anniversary release in 2013 of The Bell Jar “Remembering Sylvia Plath”.
· “On the 50th Anniversary of Sylvia Plath’s Death A Look at Her Beginning” quotes excerpts from her first poetry collection The Colossus and reflects upon their structure and meaning.
