Kaufman's "Sylvia Plath Effect" in Sexton's Poetic Search for identity

Abstract

Poetry as a form of literature expresses humans’ emotions and passions which makes it
important in the context of psychiatric studies of human illnesses. One of the illnesses
recurrently discussed in psychiatric studies is manic-depressive illness as a condition of creative
people's genius. Madness has preoccupied many different disciplines and has “caused them to
converge, thus subverting their boundaries” (Felman, 12). To relate this scientific notion to art
is to speak of the similarity between madness and literature. Both madness and literature are
ruled by the feelings that are repressed in them which necessitates a psychoanalytic
examination in order to read them