Between 1961 and 1964, Anne Sexton’s therapist, Dr. Martin Orne, taped their sessions so she could listen to them afterward. She had severe memory lapses and often couldn’t remember the things she revealed in therapy. She was tasked with writing down what she remembered saying during the sessions and comparing it to the tapes. It was tedious and demanding but helpful in her treatment. She had always struggled with fits of despair and anger, but without always knowing the why or where they came from. The tapes helped her recall emotional and important events that mattered to her.

She would claim writing, which Dr. Orne had suggested when she first started therapy with him in 1956, saved her. As among the pioneers of confessional poetry, she held nothing back. Her published poems talked of mental illness, infidelities, erotic fantasies, incest, even the abuse she wrought on her husband and children. She wrote about these subjects long before any woman did, and beyond her poetry, the tapes reveal a truly tortured and flawed woman who didn’t spare anyone, neither her lovers nor her family, from her wrath nor her art.

To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1960)

Her Kind
 “I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.”

In 1955, after the birth of her second child, Joy, Sexton became prone to blinding rages, often hitting two-year-old Linda for the tiniest infractions. Afraid she would harm her children, she spiraled into a severe nervous breakdown, the first of many. Her family had a long history and was understanding. She had a maternal grand-aunt, one she was close to, who was institutionalized and a paternal grandfather who had been hospitalized for his breakdowns. Sexton was admitted to Westwood Lodge, a psychiatric facility where her father and sister were treated for alcoholism in the past.

Psychoanalysis was in its infant stages. She underwent numerous evaluations, including a Rorschach, and was diagnosed with “severe psychoneurotic features.” She was given doses of vitamins and psychoactive medications and then released so she could be home to celebrate Joy’s first birthday. But fearing she could not care for her daughters, they were sent to stay with relatives.

When her husband, Kayo, went on a business trip, her anxiety worsened. In the past, she had cured the separation with infidelities. This time, she swallowed a bottle of barbiturates – Nembutal – what she would afterward refer to as her “kill me” pills. Again, she was rushed to the hospital – this time to an institution specifically for the mentally ill and underwent psychotherapy five times a week.

Her worsening condition was inexplicable. Feeling she had “creative potential,” Dr. Orne suggested she write about her experiences as part of her treatment. But he was surprised at the batches of formally typed poems she began bringing in to show him. It was another inheritance – her mother and grandfather were both writers.

Live or Die (1966)

Sylvia’s Death
“Thief –
how did you crawl into,
crawl down alone
into the death I wanted so badly and for so long,
the death we said we both outgrew..”

With the publication of her poetry, Sexton had become a serious poet. But she still needed intensive psychiatric treatment and often requested Dr. Orne to schedule additional sessions. Her family felt she was still unstable and unpredictable.

Again, at Dr. Orne’s suggestion, she began to take classes and poetry workshops. Among her teachers were W.D. Snodgrass and Robert Lowell, accomplished poets who became her mentors. Other poets pulled into her orbit were Maxine Kumin and Sylvia Plath, who became her friends and colleagues, and George Starbuck and James Wright, who became her lovers.

Sexton and Plath both grew up in Wellesley, a suburb of Boston, but only met when they became classmates in Lowell’s workshop in 1959. Lowell was a brilliant poet-critic but also a manic depressive who went through cycles of self-destruction and self-reproach. His confessional style was cathartic for him and many of his students, and the style would develop into a modern genre of poetry.

At this time, Sexton was 30, and Plath was 26. They were polar opposites. Sexton often slipped into class late, chain-smoking between brightly lipsticked lips, while Plath was poised and quiet, always early. But they were both aspiring poets in a time when they were hardly seen as more than housewives. After classes, they headed out for drinks until Sexton’s scheduled therapy session in the evening.

They talked about poetry, family, husbands and gossip. There was something else they shared. Over dry martinis that were like truth serums, they compared private notes on their mental breakdowns and suicide attempts. And in those few short hours, perhaps they felt somewhat normal and a little less alone.

In 1963, the news came that Plath had died. She was in London then, and the media initially cited pneumonia. But those close to her knew.

Mercy Street (1969)

Briar Rose
“Consider
a girl who keeps slipping off,
arms limp as old carrots,
into the hypnotist’s trance,
into a spirit world
speaking with the gift of tongues.”

While each session seemed to improve her condition, Sexton came to the next as distraught. Blaming her memory problems, she underwent hypnosis in an attempt to recover repressed memories. Early in her treatment in 1957, an Elizabeth persona made appearances while Sexton was in a trance. Memories of incestuous relationships between her and her grand-aunt and her and her father began to emerge.

However, many were never sure if it was memory or fantasy. According to Dr. Orne, Sexton was easily suggestible and often mimicked the symptoms of other patients in the hospital. She had read Freud and Jung and talked knowledgeably about transference, regression and the Oedipus complex, as if trying to figure out for herself what kind of patient she should be.

At the same time, she was writing a play, Mercy Street, mirroring Elizabeth’s stories. Whether her experiences inspired her writing or she used her writing to fill the gaps in her memory was never settled. Friends and family were divided on the issue. Even Sexton admitted she took on another persona when writing poetry, a new reality that allowed her to feel whole.

When her first daughter, Linda, turned fifteen, she, too, began psychotherapy. Her mother’s cuddling had begun to feel different, clingy and furtive. When Kayo was away on business trips and Sexton felt lonely, she insisted Linda sleep in the same bed.

Love Poems (1969)

For My Lover, Returning To His Wife
 “She is so naked and singular
She is the sum of yourself and your dream.
Climb her like a monument, step after step.
She is solid.
As for me, I am a watercolor.
I wash off.”

Sexton’s marriage had been deteriorating for some time. Kayo was aware of her many affairs. She wasn’t very careful. Drinking was their daily ritual before dinner. They fought verbally and physically. She would yell and throw things, he would hit her, and they would make up in apologies. It was a cycle that went on for two decades.

In 1964, Dr. Orne moved to Philadelphia and Sexton was placed under the care of Dr. Frederick J. Duhl. Shortly after, they began a sexual relationship during her therapy sessions. Her therapeutical writing became love poems for him. Instead of resisting, he wrote love letters in return, a clear breach of professional ethics. She came to the sessions with a nightdress in her purse, and that was how therapy went twice a week.

Her friends convinced her to end the affair and seek another therapist, but Sexton refused. She carried on several affairs during this time, including with co-poet Bob Clawson and another psychiatrist, Anne Wilder.

The Awful Rowing Toward God (1975)

The Truth the Dead Know
“Gone, I say and walk from church,
refusing the stiff procession to the grave,
letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.
It is June. I am tired of being brave.”

By the 70s, Sexton had become a celebrated poet. Live or Die won the Pulitzer. She was teaching at Boston University and had a busy schedule of book tours and readings.

In 1973, she and Kayo divorced. She entered into an affair with Phil Ledger, a married professor who had been obsessed with her for years. Though her friends and new psychiatrist, Dr. Constant Chase, cautioned her on throwing herself into such relationships, she ignored them, writing long erotic letters to Ledger and pleading for him to leave his wife. She was deeply in love with him.

When Ledger went back to his family, Sexton spiraled down. Her daughter, Joy, drove her to the hospital. Linda stayed away, too exhausted at what she calls “years of hysteria,” an unbearable combination of generational trauma and psychological and physical abuse.

Sexton ended her life on October 4, 1974. She wrote no notes. She stripped her fingers of the rings she was wearing, poured herself a glass of vodka, and put on her mother’s fur coat. She went into the garage, climbed into her car, and turned on the ignition and the radio to listen to music.