Confessional Poetry and Psychological Identity: Sylvia Plath as an Example

Balen Ababakr
Safiya Hassan
Zubaida Zuhair

Sylvia Plath is considered to be one the very important literary figures of the twentieth century. In addition to the other literary merits of her works, she is famous for her confessional poems which is a form of writing that emerged in the late 1950s and early 1960s and is associated with poets such as Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and W.D. Snodgrass. Confessional Poetry focuses on extreme moments of personal experience, insanity, and personal trauma, and is often associated with wider social issues. Sylvia Plath's 'Morning Song' cemented her contribution to the confessional movement. The 1970s saw the emergence of the confessional poetry movement, which has had a greater social impact than most literary revolutions. Psychoanalysis, which is very much linked to confessionalism, focuses on the interplay between the conscious and unconscious mind and how this affects human behavior. Furthermore, identity is essential for developing a sense of self, making social connections, and achieving personal objectives. Plath's poem ‘Lady Lazarus’ explores issues of public morality, interpersonal relationships, and supra-personal dimensions of knowledge, using poetic form to convey ideas and feelings. Also, the well-known poem ‘Daddy’ focuses on her relationship with males, particularly her father, her trauma, and how her father's absence affected Plath's life relationships. It also explains how her father's absence led her to look and try to find her father in other men such as her husband.