Creativity vs. Psychological Health of Anne Sexton

A number of creative individuals have taken their receive lives, including John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, and many other writers. The large number of such cases suggests that at that place may be a functional relationship between creative thinking and psychological health. This relationship seems to vary across domains, with the rate of self-annihilation especially utmost in certain groups of artists. This may suggest that there may be several(prenominal)thing unique to those domains that either draws suicide-pr single persons into the domain or has an impact on the individual such that suicide is considered and oftentimes attempted.When the poem writing by Anne sexton entitled Her Kind you can closely comp ar how Annes psychogenic health affected her poetry and how her poetry affected her mental health. The American Pulitzer Prizewinning poet Anne sacristan took her have got life in 1974 via carbon monoxide poisoning before reaching the age of fifty. Her l ife and cash in ones chips are especially interesting because her poetry was cl aboriginal tied to her own psychiatric treatment. She began writing with only moderate formal culture (a high school diploma), alone after being published she was given honorary degrees from several(prenominal) universities, including Tufts, Radcliffe, and Harvard. sextons poems, many dealing with suicide, read together with richly researched new-fangled biography, enhanced by biographers access to tapes of Sextons sessions with her psychiatrist and by foreword by that psychiatrist, permit unusual opportunity to understand the interrelationship of her illness, her treatment, and the meaning of suicide in her life. Whatever was on her mind seemed to come out in her poetry whether it was just about sex, madness or death. Readers tend to be too-generous in their praise, celebrating the poetry primarily because it so fully and openly reveals Sextons in the flesh(predicate) pain (Anne).Basically, the s peaker of Her Kind is outcast because she is powerful. Traditionally, society expects women to lead furnish lives. Women are to be obedient, quiet, and timid. They are viewed as gentle and kind, not pipe dream evil (Line 3, Sexton). The unexampled, liberated woman completely shatters this tradition by bravely speaking her mind and living an independent life. She is empowered as she seeks education and a stable career instead of a domestic life. Since the mod woman does not fit the traditional label, A woman same(p) that is not a woman quite (Line 6, Sexton).Society would view this class of the poem as a negative slam on the modern woman and paraphrase it by saying, Shes not quite right in the head therefore, she does not belong here in civilization. Anne Sexton was a poet and a woman, but most importantly, she was an outcast. Subjected to nervous breakdowns and admitted to a neuropsychiatry hospital, Sexton must have been all too familiar with the staring eyes and the deci de minds of the public. Just being a woman in todays world often can be enough to degrade a person in the publics eye, let alone being labeled as a raging woman.But Anne Sexton did not let society remain uncontroversial in its views. She voiced a different opinion of women through poetry. In Anne Sextons Her Kind she embraces societys negative sort out of modern, liberated women and transforms it into a positive image. two voices, the voice of society and the voice of Anne, duel about the issue of the stereotype of modern women. Like Anne Sexton, the speaker in this poem is an outcast woman. Sexton was born in Massachusetts on November 9, 1928, to Mary Gray Staples and Ralph Churchill Harvey, who were know to drink regularly and both(prenominal)times heavily.They were somewhat prominent and quite socially active. Scholars suggest that they may have valued their social engagements over their family responsibilities. at that place is some evidence that Sextons mother was jealous about her very early writing (Long). Sexton did not have obvious creative aspirations, but instead seemed to think more about a family of her own. At one point her mother accused her of plagiarism and had that particular writing examined. It was deemed to be original, but many scholars suggest this incident affected Sextons relationship with her mother.Sextons aunt on her fathers side attempted suicide in early childhood, lived several decades in an plainly stable marriage, and eventually committed suicide fair before she turned seventy. The family believes that if her aunts suicide had any sort of influence on Sexton, it was probably informational (e. g. , the aunt modeling suicide) rather than genetic. Biographers place great tenseness on Sextons psychiatric treatment, which was significant as evidenced by the sate of her poetry. And, it is possible, given her nonconformism that Sexton suffered from a borderline personality disorder.There are reports of her schizophrenic langu age, for instance, as well as her tendency to enter some sort of trance at the end of her psychiatric treatment sessions. She apparently did not want to end the sessions, maybe because of emotional and social needs. Sextons writing seems so personal she is often labeled a confessional poet Anne did not agree with this title and preferred to be called a narrator (Middlebrook). For instance, in her poem titled Her Kind she writes, A woman equal that is not a woman, quite. I have been her kind (Sexton).Many peck would automatically assume that Anne was speaking about herself in her poem, especially concord to those who believe her poetry is confessional. But in real(a)ity, she considered the speaking I in her poetry as a literary rather than a real identity (Middlebrook). Not everything she wrote was necessarily about her but rather perhaps a form of therapy. Diane Middlebrook believes Sexton conveys the terms on which she wishes to be dumb not victim, but a witness (Middlebrook ). Through reading Anne Sextons poem Her Kind we get a better intelligence of Anne herself.She was a strong character who used her writing as therapy. Doctors neer knew that her writing would have such an impact on the world. She writes specifically in her poem Her Kind about what she went through in society as a woman. Through Annes writing it improved her mental health. It was an emergence for her feelings. Her writing was true and honest and something many women would never talk about much less publicly write about. Her mental health providential her creative writing which in turn helped her mental health to some degree. Her honest writing became her outlet and a way of therapy.Works Cited Anne (Harvey) Sexton. American Writers A Collection of Literary Biographies. Ed. A. Walton Litz. New York Charles Scribners Sons, 1981. literary productions Resource Center. Gale. University of sec Carolina Libraries. 6 Apr. 2009 . George, Diana Hume. Oedipus Anne The Poetry of Anne Sext on. Oedipus Anne The Poetry of Anne Sexton. University of Illinois Press, 1987. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Daniel G. Marowski and Roger Matuz. Vol. 53. Detroit Gale Research, 1982. Literature Resource Center. Gale. University of South Carolina Libraries. 7 Apr. 2009