Schultz critiques previous psychobiographies of Sylvia Plath for not closely examining her actual writings and words. He argues that the loss of Plath's father in childhood was the most salient event in her life and influenced her later suicide based on Freud's theories of mourning and melancholia. However, Schultz acknowledges that Plath may have misunderstood Freud's intent and that fully understanding her suicide requires focusing on the "why" rather than attributing it solely to her father's death.

1. Mourning,
Melancholy, and
Sylvia Plath
William Todd Schultz

2. Previous Psychobiographys on
Plath:
• Lester (1998) - attributes Plath’s suicide to the theories of
Schneidman, Murray, and Beck, and believes Plath
suffered from manic-depressive bipolar disorder in the
months leading up to her suicide
• Shulman (1998) - attributes Plath’s suicide to a wish to join
her father, Otto, in death as well as issues of alienation,
perfectionism, self hate, and the realization of the failure
of her marriage

3. (Continued)
• Thompson (1990) attributes Plath’s suicide
to a severe form of PMS
• Runco (1998) attributes Plath’s suicide to a
“psychoeconomic hypothesis” - deals with
time investment theory: Plath felt unwilling
to invest anymore time in her creative
potential so death was the next course of
action

4. Schultz:
• finds fault with these previous psychobiographies
because they do not do Plath and her art justice in
that they do not follow her actually words/writing,
he goes on to note that Plath was very insightful
about her own moods/state of mind, so we, as
psychobiographers should use what she writes in
order to determine theories
• also notes that many of these psychobiographies
used an abundance of “probably(s)” in their
writing, which “gradually lose all qualification”

5. Main Argument:
• correlation between loss and creativity
• loss of father, Otto, was the single most
salient event in Plath’s life and is the basis
for her later suicide
• Plath was heavily influenced by Freud’s
Mourning and Melancholia, wrote that it
described exactly what she was feeling in
her journal

6. Freud’s Mourning and
Melancholia
• both develop out of loss, but while mourning
is not pathological and decreases with time,
melancholia is based in extreme dissatisfaction
with the self
• for Plath, the loss of her father shattered her
love for him, she could emotionally overcome
this event and therefore extreme self hate
developed

7. (Continued)
• this leads to a path of self punishment because
it creates a desire to kill this internal object
(self) that is causing grief
• therefore, suicide is actually an attempt to kill
the inner self and rid itself of melancholia
• in this way, Plath’s suicide was a murder-
suicide, but ultimately still resulted in her own
death

8. (Continued)
• Otto’s death was a salient event for Plath
because she idolized him - when he died, she
claimed “I will never speak to God again”
which could account for both a God and Otto
• Freud attributes this intense fixation as a result
of a “problematic self ” in that (in this case)
Plath has no real separation/boundary between
herself and others

9. Schultz:
• Ultimately, Schultz believes Plath
misunderstood Freud’s true intent in that
she immediately attributed the loss of her
father to all of her psychological problems -
they are definitely a cause, but may not be
the only cause
• Schultz says to fully understand Plath we
must focus on the “why” of her suicide

10. Critiques:
• The previous psychobiographers seemed to “diagnose”
Plath - with bipolar disorder, PMS, etc
• Schultz continually refers to The Bell Jar’s writings as
evidence for Plath’s fixation on her father and hatred of
her mother, yet The Bell Jar is a novel written by Plath
told from the first person perspective of Esther - we
cannot view Esther’s “thoughts” as simply an extension
of Plath’s own, however similar, because Plath was
creating a character, though the character is quite
obviously based on herself, it is still a character

11. (Continued)
• These interpretations made by Schultz do
provide a clarification of behavior and fit
with the general knowledge of Plath
• Though, it did end a bit abruptly in that it
laid out the foundation for the explanation/
theories about behavior, but did not explain
further on how we can evaluate the “why”
of Plath’s suicide