PLATH,SYLVIA - A PROTOCOL ANALYSIS OF HER LAST POEMS

Personal documents have a significant place in psychological research. Suicide notes, diaries, novels, poems, and so on allow us to better u nderstand the suicidal mind. The works of Sylvia Plath-a poet who kill ed herself at age 30-are prime examples for such protocol study. This article examines the last 6 months of Plath's poetry, revealing a suic idal malaise. Associating the results to the lives of Cesare Pavese an d the case study of Natalie, a Terman-Shneidman subject of the intelle ctually gifted, the study shows a unity thema that facilitates the pro cess of death. The poems reveal such themes as unbearable pain, loss, and abandonment that likely contributed significantly to death becomin g the only solution.