Psychological progress is often made through failing to prove hypotheses and
there is a possibility that the happy poets who killed themselves were
bipolar as opposed to just depressed. Again it's the focus on the self
through ups and downs that seems to matter in the actual act of suicide
rather than going on being happy or unhappy.
again if you like I can pass this along to him. I know he'll be glad some
literary people actually read it. His comment to me awhile back was that
when he talked to lit people about it where he worked their comment was "we
don't like to read that stuff in our field. We only read _______ journals."
tom
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rebecca Seiferle" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, August 16, 2003 9:28 PM
Subject: Re: Poetry & Psych
> Alison Croggon wrote: It ignores the
> self-gratifying annihilation of self that writing offers in its
> aesthetic considerations, say. Hmmm.
>
> Hmmm is right, "self-gratifying annihilation of self?" haha
>
> I read a bunch of these too, The Secret Life of Pronouns,
> Word Use in the Poetry of Suicidal and Nonsuicidal Poets,
> Lying Words, and the one you mention about the repression
> of trauma damaging the immune system, and found it interesting
> if not entirely persuasive.
>
> I had to wonder why in "The Secret Life of Pronouns," the most
> significant measure of increasing health is a change of style
> in pronoun usage, and in "Lying Words," a primary indicator
> of truthfulness is the use of the first person pronoun, whereas
> the use of the first person pronoun is hypothesized as
> part of the disengagement of the suicidal poet.
>
> I also noticed that in the conclusions for this paper on
> the suicidal and nonsuicidal poet, nothing was said
> about the higher means of terms of "positive emotions" among
> the suicidal poets, which are 3.3 early, 3.1 middle, and 3.9
> later. Whereas the control, and nonsuicidal group of poets,
> was 2.3 early, 2.9 in middle, 2.5 late. Which indicates
> that suicidal poets have a higher rate of terms of "positive
> emotion (happy, love) and may just get happier and happier. Whereas
> the control group seems to decline somewhat. Though it was
> noted that the suicidal poets had a higher usage of sexual words
> throughout their writing. Which in a weird sort of way might
> suggest that due to their increased use of the first person,
> the suicidal poets are not liars (since in "Lying Words"
> "liars used first-person pronouns at a lower rate than
> truth-tellers), that they express more positive emotion,
> happiness and love, and that this increases as they go,
> more terms of "communication (talk, share)" and more sexual
> words throughout their writing lives. Well, is it any wonder
> the poor fools do themselves in?
>
> Well, seriously, this paper "hypothesized that there would be
> an increase in hopelessness words and in references to the
> self and a decrease in positive emotion words and references
> to communications with others in the later periods of the poets'
> careers." In the hopelessness words, there was a continuing
> decrease from 2.2 to 1.8 to 1.7. The positive emotion words
> increased as I noted above. The references to the self remained
> the same as 4.0 in the early and later work, with a dip in
> the middle. And only the references to communications with
> others declined, from 1.2 to 1.0. Three out of four of
> the elements of the hypothesis were contradicted by the study's
> own data. Also the conclusions at one point seem simply in
> error, "Additionally, the use of the first-person plural, which
> might indicate an awareness of and an integration in social
> and personal relationships, was lower in the suicide group's
> poetry than it was in that of the nonsuicide group." But
> Table 1 shows for the use "We (us, our) for the suicide
> group .73, 1.3, and .85, and for the control group, .69,
> .40, and 1.1. It's only lower in later usage, and if that
> is significant, I wonder what to make of that .40 among
> the "socially integrated" nonsuicidal group.
>
> When the authors begin the conclusion "the results indicate
> that certain features may be associated with suicide,"
> _may_ seems to be the operative word here. Particularly
> for a study that failed to prove three out of four
> of the elements of its hypothesis.
>
> Best,
>
> Rebecca
>
> Rebecca Seiferle
> www.thedrunkenboat.com
>
>
>
> -------Original Message-------
> From: Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: 08/17/03 10:19 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Poetry & Psych
>
> >
> > At 2:56 PM -0500 16/8/03, tom bell wrote:>here's an url for a pdf
> version
>
>http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/faculty/Pennebaker/Reprints/Suicida
l
> >Poets.PDF
> >
> >but you'll probably need to cut and paste it in your browser?
>
> The end of the url might have fallen off - I had to reinstate an "htm"
>
> Well, I've downloaded a few of the essays, and I am really not at all
> sure that this kind of investigation really pertains to imaginative
> writing. I have long known that repressing trauma rather than
> expressing it leads to depressing the immune system, and that also
> the entering of imaginative states may be as traumatic as the
> original episodes, and may exacerbate mental problems rather than
> solve them (who is it in the Bible who say that wisdom only leads to
> sadness?) I think most writers are very familiar with their own
> neuroses whether they choose to express them directly or not. &c.
> And he just seems to be saying things like, well, poets who write
> about sad stuff are more likely to kill themselves... Also I don't
> know how you can do a linguistic analysis of Mandelstam and Pasternak
> in English, but there is no comment on studying the work in its
> original Russian. I also downloaded his essay on truth-tellers and
> liars and their linguistic use, and wondered whether he would say
> fiction writers were truth tellers or liars. Since of course good
> fiction writers are both.
>
> I actually have very little doubt that imaginative writing is a
> adaptive survival mechanism. But there is a real problem in viewing
> it through therapeutic glasses. Dr Pennebaker seems to be coming
> from the other end - that it helps people to write things down or
> otherwise express what troubles them - which is fine, but I think is
> of little use in analysing the phenomenon of writing and runs the
> risk of boxing it in issues of mental health. It ignores the
> self-gratifying annihilation of self that writing offers in its
> aesthetic considerations, say. Hmmm.
>
> A much more urgent and interesting relationship between trauma and
> language is outlined in Elizabeth Scarry's The Body in Pain - The
> Making and Unmaking of the World.
>
> Best
>
> A
> --
>
>
> Alison Croggon
>
> Blog
> http://alisoncroggon.blogspot.com
>
> Editor, Masthead
> http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
>
> Home page
> http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
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