In 2001, psychologist James C. Kaufman wrote that “the notion of writers existing in a living hell is a popular one.” On this, he is correct. On most of the rest of what he wrote, he is less correct.
Kaufman, whose predominant area of study is creativity, was examining published research papers with the goal of determining whether or not mental illness truly is more common in writers - particularly poets - and what the root of this correlation may be.
More specifically, the paper he published sought to link the “visions of writers living disturbed, troubled lives” to reality, using prior data collected on this subject. To do this, Kaufman cited previous research that found “writers and found that a significantly higher percentage of them suffered from some form of mental illness than would be expected,” though he added the caveat that the sample size for these works was typically small.
Regardless of issues like small size and general questions about methodology, Kaufman considered dozens of research papers about the quantitative links to writing and mental illness. Then he drew his own kind of weird conclusion.
Rather than pointing to the idea that poets are more likely to live with mental illness because, say, poetry is very alluring to people with Big Feelings, Kaufman instead supposes that it’s something about the thought process of the poet; in the “chicken and egg” scenario of “craziness and poetry,” Kaufman seems to lean more toward poetry actually making people (women) crazier than they’d have been without it.
Poets may mentally assign credit — and, indirectly, their locus of control — to such a muse, inadvertently placing themselves at a higher risk for depression and other emotional disorders. And women, especially those suffering from low self-esteem, may be more likely to have external, rather than internal, loci of control.
Gosh, why would women of say, the early 20th century have had a sense of loss of control? Why might they have had low self-esteem? Doesn’t matter! Moving on!
Ultimately, Kaufman found that poets - again, especially, specifically female poets - were not only more likely to live with mental illness, but to be “swallowed” by it. As they allowed themselves to be engulfed in the quicksand of lyrical language, they would deepen their own mental health struggles, becoming wailing, weeping wisps.
He named this “the Sylvia Plath effect.”
From the paper, one of Kaufman’s hypotheses:
“…why should Plath’s writing — or any female poet’s writing — have a deleterious effect on their mental health? Many studies (e.g., Pennebaker, 1997) have shown that when people write about emotional experiences, both their physical and mental health improves. A reasonable assumption might be to expect that writers would therefore be more mentally stable than non-writers, yet this assumption has not been borne out in research.
Perhaps, however, this line of research can explain the finding…that male non-fiction writers experienced less personal tragedy than other writers…It could be that non-fiction writers are more likely to put a positive spin on traumatic life events, while poets are more likely to put a negative spin on traumatic life events. This difference could result in poorer mental health for poets, and an increased physical and mental health for non-fiction writers — which may help buffer them against some types of personal tragedy.”
So like, here’s when I have to take a beat.
The idea of the "Sylvia Plath effect” is clearly deeply gendered - not to mention entirely focused on whiteness and rooted in a gender binary that doesn’t really exist in practice. It also puts the onus on the writer, rather than the entire rest of the world. Women poets feel helpless, so they write about it, so they feel more helpless because this learned helplessness is somehow comforting. Have they just tried being less helpless? Hmmmmm?
Or - and here’s where I propose a very daring theory! - maybe women in the arts face and have faced very real systemic challenges, both in their industry and on the homefront. And perhaps those outside factors, when coupled with an existing mental illness, leads them to look for methods of release that are inexpensive, easy to access, and harmless to themselves and the people around them?
Maybe the only way to stave off the deep, sucking agony of life - the only way to keep cookies from being the only thing to go in your oven - is to scratch out your thoughts and then read them back and think “yes, that is exactly it.” Because maybe the ~ female poet ~ has gone all these years without seeing her lived experience mirrored back in the larger world? And maybe because mental illness in women has been generally laughed off as hysteria for oh, 200 years, women who are in crisis are more likely to find their own solace, rather than see a doctor until things get real dire?
Maybe Sylvia Plath and “each suburban wife struggles with it alone.” Maybe, like Betty Friedan wrote, “as she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night- she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question-- 'Is this all?”
Is this all?
The idea that Kaufman was asking - “are crazy people more likely to be writers?” and/ or “are writers more likely to be crazy?” - can’t be answered without examining the myriad outside forces that exist in every single human life. And using Sylvia Plath as an example is borderline laughable.
Plath, who was married to a man who was, by all accounts, an utter asshole. Plath, who published her first poem at the age of eight, ostensibly long before she could be putting a “negative spin” on her life’s events. Plath, who was exceptionally driven at a very young age, who lost her father at a young age, who showed signs of depression at a young age. Plath, whose breakout novel features a scene where the protagonist - who is just Plath! under a different name! - wanders around the house looking for a place to hang herself.
Plath, who was very clearly living with something beyond her ability to deal with on her own and found a way to both have a job that allowed her to be home with her kids and also demonstrate her prowess and also feel praised and loved?
She is not an avatar of Sad Lady Poets. She is an icon of thorough, gutting, knitted-into-every-fiber depression who was married to a prick and didn’t benefit from medical interventions until way later. I’m pretty sure the poetry didn’t make her sad.
In fact, it seems like a way for her to feel less sad, to practice gratitude, to take stock of what made her happy.
Is the question, then, whether she, as a writer, might “perceive [herself] as being in control of their muse” as Kaufman theorizes, or whether she had a genetic predisposition to depression that was compounded by outside factors?
Questioning the findings - and underlying assumptions inherent to them - Deborah Smith Bailey of the Monitor on Psychology wrote that the kind of research Kaufman was using “is often fraught with methodological problems, including selection bias, controls that are not blinded, reliance on biographies that might play up mental illness, retrospective designs and unclear definitions of creativity.”
From her paper:
Does creativity cause mental illness? There isn't a link between mental illness and the actual process of creating, says psychiatrist Albert Rothenberg, MD, of Harvard Medical School, who has studied Nobel laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners and other highly creative individuals. Rather, he argues that mental illnesses such as anxiety, thought disorder and depression disrupt the cognitive and emotional processes necessary for successful creativity.
In fact, in his book, "Creativity and Madness: New Findings and Old Stereotypes" (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), Rothenberg proposes that highly creative people do better when they are treated for their mental illnesses.
"That doesn't mean people who create haven't often had mental illnesses," he adds, but that their subject matter and the field they are in perhaps have more bearing on their mental health than creativity itself.
Bailey also goes on to astutely note that the research papers almost exclusively focus on “eminent writers, “ which is to say, writers who have had financial success or notoriety, which “could produce more stress--leading to a higher incidence of mental illness.”
Were to you study say, middle school students who express an interest in poetry; or college students; or unpublished communications managers; or any other group of people who are not famous, you’d probably find a different group of data.
Additionally - in a moment that I feel like is a bit of a barb about Kaufman’s poetic literacy - Bailey explains that “Kaufman theorizes that poets may not garner the same benefits from writing that other writers do because poems seldom form a narrative.” Which like, anyone who has read “The Colossus” or “Ella Mason and Her Eleven Cats” could tell you is a billion percent not the case.
But that’s not the part that I hate the most about all of this. The part I hate the most about this idea, this “effect” is how unbelievably dangerous it is.
Creativity is a terrible reason to stay sick
So, this entire line of theory - that somehow, mental illness makes people better writers or more likely to get famous or published - is not only absolutely horseshit, it’s actually extremely harmful. Esteemed poets of all genders have gotten where they are in spite of their mental illness, not because of. Wallowing in the sadness through poetry does not keep people sick. They are not at the mercy of their perceived creative locus. And no one can write wonderful poetry when they are deceased.
At the end of her life, after numerous attempts to end it, Sylvia Plath was prescribed an anti-depressant by a doctor who knew very well that she was at huge risk. Unfortunately, the scrip came too late; she started it just three days before she ultimately took her own life, which was not enough time to save her. Had she been on them sooner, she may have lived a much longer and better life.
There have been many, many people - people who want to be writers, who want to be artists, to want to “eminent” - who have avoided taking medication or staying on their medication for fear that it will make them less creative.
Because they genuinely believe that it’s the craziness that fuels them. Because they worry that without the depths of the despair and the high-highs and the push from unseen forces, they won’t be as good. Because being medicated has long been linked, culturally but not scientifically, to being unable to create. And being unmedicated has been touted, usually inadvertently, to writing success.
This is so dangerous.
And also, it’s not true. I mean, sure, it’s kind of true in that a lot of the drugs we give to folks with various ailments can leave us feeling distant, numb, or out of touch with our deepest emotions. Lord knows my SSRI has turned me into like, a regular person with a regular range of feelings. But also, I’ve done some of my best work while medicated.
Why? Because I can actually do work when I’m medicated. I can meet deadlines and form thoughts and express my ideas. My mental illness is not a superpower. It’s a chronic condition that I have to treat every single day in order to continue to live a productive life.
And yes, I happen to also be a writer but that’s because it’s the only thing I’ve ever been really good at.
Even Kaufman himself, to his credit, has evolved his thinking. In a follow-up paper 16 years after the initial coining of “the Sylvia Plath effect,” he wrote the following:
A journalist recently asked me my thoughts on young women idolizing Plath on social media, and it did make me think. It’s easy to say that of course, idolizing (and imitating) Plath won’t make someone more creative or artistic. But people still do it, and that can be dangerous. Romanticizing depression and pain can lead to self-injurious behavior or the belief that you need to have tragedy or illness to be an artist.
INDEED, SIR.
Kaufman’s later writing is actually pretty interesting and a testament to how much people can learn and grow, and how it’s actually not that hard to say “yup, 20 years ago I sure was a ding-dong! Anyway here’s my new work.” Like, very literally. The dude actually describes himself as “young and stupid” and I appreciate that!
Unfortunately, like the proverbial bell, you can’t unring that shit and people *still* ascribe to the idea that young (white, upper-class) female poets are just sad for the sake of being sad and that that sadness is their creative advantage. Regardless of the work that Kaufman might do to rewind these collectively-held idea about ~ poetesses ~ and their delightful depressions, people still really do believe that somehow, untreated mental illness makes them better at what they do.
And if you’re still not sure - if you’re still feeling like you can’t really ~ create ~ when you’re on meds, here’s the challenge I’d pose: Give it a try? Like a real try? And see how that goes. Because regardless of how much or what quality of work you do while you’re alive and medicated, it’s still more than Sylvia Plath has done since 1963. And that’s a stone-cold bummer.