Emotional Self-Repair and Poetry

Some scholars have argued that writing poetry was harmful for the psychological health of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. Both writers seem to have suffered from affective disorders, but their poetry probably provided a cathartic benefit for them and helped them gain cognitive distance from their inner conflicts, since the writing of poetry requires a great deal of technical revision that may have an effect similar to cognitive therapy. It is argued, therefore, that writing may have helped both of these poets to survive longer than they might have had they not written.