Creativity and its Psychological Traits in Emily Dickinson’s and Anne Sexton’s Selected Poems

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze and explain two significant poems written by two female poets: Emily Dickinson and Ann Sexton, to disclose the relationship between creativity and unstable psychological state of mind. This study will examine Dickinson’s poem “I felt a funeral in My Brain’’ and Sexton’s poem “Wanting to Die” to reveal their themes of death, madness, and suicide to detect the mental depression and bipolar disorder they suffered from. Moreover, it is proven that there is a direct connection between creativity and mental disorder, according to some modern studies by psychologists like Kay Redfield Jamison and psychiatrist Nancy Andreason. The study will answer the following two questions: do the female poets: Emily Dickinson and Anne Sexton suffer from a mental disorder in their lives? And what is the impact of their poetic creativity on their fate?