Sylvia Plath Revisited in the Lens of Depersonalization

Abstract

This article examined Sylvia Plath’s hysterical symptoms through the lens of depersonalization and  investigated Plath’s “Daddy”, “Mirror” and some selected letters. The study adopted the  American Psychiatric Association approach in which depersonalization is classified as a hysteric psychoform of consciousness and awareness.As discovered in the study, a large number of poems and letters of Plath  illustrated how she is treated as an object or a commodity under male domination during her time. It was also found that, one of the major disorders of depersonalization is associated with a sense of detachment from one’s self which are discovered in the selected literary works of Plath. In sum, Plath represented depersonalisation as a memorable response to suffering situations such as emotional abuse, stress, and imprisonment in her life.By adopting the APA to analyze written literary texts, it will bring new multidisciplinary concepts and behaviours involved in the construction of ’depersonalization’ to provide researchers with an  essential frame for new study.