title: Sylvia Plath: a protocol analysis of her last poems.
abstract: Personal documents have a significant place in psychological research.  Suicide notes, diaries, novels, poems, and so on allow us to better understand the suicidal mind.  The works of Sylvia Plath--a poet who killed herself at age 30--are prime examples for such protocol study.  This article examines the last 6 months of Plath's poetry, revealing a suicidal malaise.  Associating the results to the lives of Cesare Pavese and the case study of Natalie, a Terman-Shneidman subject of the intellectually gifted, the study shows a unit thema that facilitates the process of death.  The poems reveal such themes as unbearable pain, loss, and abandonment that likely contributed significantly to death becoming the only solution.
authors.affiliation: University of Leiden, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: A A
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Leenaars
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wenckstern
mesh_terms: D004282:Documentation; D005197:Famous Persons; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D008093:Literature, Modern; D011037:Poetry as Topic / Q000266:history; D012307:Risk Factors; D013405:Suicide / Q000266:history* / Q000523:psychology; D014481:United States; D014956:Writing / Q000266:history*