The death of Sylvia Plath, which occurred when she put her head in the oven, and the mental state that led her there—a story nearly all of us know—became a phenomenon in psychology in 2001.
Psychologist James C. Kaufman wanted to examine the claim that creative writers are more prone to mental illness than the average person. Until then, no tangible and detailed study had been conducted on the matter. Kaufman believed that not all writers might be equally prone to this tendency. Indeed, as the result of a study involving 1,629 writers, it appeared that female poets were more prone to mental illness than both female creative writers who were not poets and all male writers (Kaufman, 2001). Just as depression is known to be twice as common in women as in men (Nolen-Hoeksema, 2001), there was already a gender-based difference in the prevalence of mental illness, so it was not surprising that male writers suffered less from mental illness. What was interesting, however, was that women poets had the highest rates of depression even among female writers.
Kaufman’s Research on Women Poets
In the second stage of his research, Kaufman studied 520 eminent women, and again the results showed that women poets had a significantly higher likelihood of experiencing mental illness compared to all other (poets, fiction writers, nonfiction writers, visual artists, politicians, and actresses) eminent women (Kaufman, 2001). Since these were correlational studies, it was impossible to tell whether writing poetry pushed women toward depression, or whether depressed women were more inclined to turn to poetry. From these findings, Kaufman introduced into psychology the phenomenon known as the Sylvia Plath Effect.
Although named after Sylvia Plath, there have been many similar events in literary history that overlap with the Sylvia Plath Effect. In Turkish literature, Nilgün Marmara—often mentioned alongside Sylvia Plath—ended her life by jumping from a balcony at nearly the same age as Sylvia.
Reflection on the Sylvia Plath Effect
So does the Sylvia Plath Effect still exist today, or did it ever truly exist when it was first proposed? Kaufman later said that, over time, he found the Sylvia Plath Effect less and less interesting. In fact, in a 2017 article reflecting on those times, he wrote: “I was young and stupid and when the media came calling, I was happy to brainstorm or suggest possible reasons for the effect” (Kaufman, 2017, p. 173).
So had the Sylvia Plath Effect never really existed? Was it nothing more than a flawed hypothesis? To understand the Sylvia Plath Effect and what it means, perhaps one must first understand Kaufman himself. James C. Kaufman is a psychologist who has devoted much of his career to the study of creativity, and continues to do so today.
At the time he proposed the Sylvia Plath Effect, it was—as it still is today—a widely held belief that writers live tormented lives and have unusual ways of thinking. Especially among creative people, bipolar disorder was thought to be particularly common. Some studies supporting this view had been conducted, but there was no robust research yet that was free from bias and based on a large enough participant pool. Kaufman, fascinated by the subject, wanted to explore myths such as the idea that creativity comes with great costs, or that art is something produced only by “sick” people. He was particularly interested in what would be revealed when the creative world was broken down into branches. Having just completed his PhD at the time, Kaufman was excited by the results he found. The Sylvia Plath Effect drew significant attention and was widely cited in art and literature. Yet, 16 years later, Kaufman looked back and felt his work had been largely misunderstood. His study was misinterpreted as if it proved that all women poets, or even all creative writers, were mentally ill (Kaufman, 2017).
Reassessing Creativity and Mental Illness
After more than 20 years of research on creativity, Kaufman himself repeatedly argued the importance of the Sylvia Plath Effect. For one thing, the biographies of so-called “ordinary” people were not written as often as those of mentally troubled figures in the arts, nor did they attract as much attention (Kaufman, 2017). Thus, comparisons were not made fairly and without bias.
Ultimately, Kaufman was not claiming that there is no connection whatsoever between mental illness and creativity. But he pointed out something crucial: in many studies, creativity was treated as a dependent variable. When Kaufman instead treated creativity as an independent variable, he found that creativity was also associated with many positive traits. Perhaps the scientific community was misframing creativity, attempting to confirm tragic myths rather than uncover its true complexity. In fact, only 10% of the studies on creativity highlighted its benefits (Kaufman, 2017). Today, Kaufman continues to focus his work on these neglected aspects of creativity.
Conclusion
The Sylvia Plath Effect is not a curse, nor a deterministic cause-and-effect relationship, but rather just one of the many possible outcomes of creativity. It should be regarded, as Kaufman did, not as a strict truth but as a metaphor that sparks scientific curiosity and highlights the multifaceted nature of creativity.