An Accident of Hope

The Therapy Tapes of Anne Sexton

Dawn M. Skorczewski

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9780415887472
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136847127
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

In 1956, Anne Sexton was admitted into a mental hospital for post-partum depression, where she met Dr. Martin Orne, a young psychiatrist who treated her for the next eight years. In that time Sexton would blossom into a world-famous poet, best known for her "confessional" poems dealing with personal subjects not often represented in poetry at that time: mental illness, depression, suicide, sex, abortion, women's bodies, and the ordinary lives of mothers and housewives. Orne audiotaped the last three years of her therapy to facilitate her ability to remember their sessions. The final six months of these tapes are the focus of this book.

In An Accident of Hope, Dawn Skorczewski links the content of the therapy with poetry excerpts, offering a rare perspective on the artist's experience and creative process. We can see Sexton attempting to make sense of her life and therapy and to sustain her confidence as a major poet, while struggling with the impending loss of Orne, who was moving elsewhere. Skorczewski's study provides an intimate, in-depth view of the therapy of a psychologically tortured yet immensely creative woman, during a period of emerging feminism and cultural change. Tracing the mutual development of the poet and the therapist during their years together, the author explores the tension between the classical therapeutic setting as practiced in the early 1960s and contemporary relational and developmental concepts in psychoanalysis, just then beginning to emerge.

An Accident of Hope also raises broader questions about the nature of healing in psychotherapy. The poet and therapist we encounter in these sessions present complex and conflicted images of the therapeutic and creative process. Orne, equal parts honesty and hesitancy, works to bolster Sexton's self-image and maintain that she is more than the sum of her poetry. Sexton, working against a tendency to hide from her most painful feelings, valiantly pushes to tell the truth in therapy, while her poems invite the readers to see another side of the story.

Just as Orne kept the audiotapes so that one day they might help others who suffer, An Accident of Hope tells the story of a therapy but moves beyond it. By offering a glimpse into the past, the present is open for reappraisal, both of Sexton herself and the legacy of psychoanalytic treatment.

1
“YOU, I, WE CREATED THE POET”

November 1963^*

Sexton: My poems are my accomplishment.

Orne: No. You are your accomplishment.^†

(November 7, 1963)

The fall of 1963 was an important time for Anne Sexton. With a travel grant from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she set off for Europe in September, accompanied by her friend Sandy Robart. In the first weeks, they toured Paris and Belgium, following in the footsteps of her Aunt Nana’s European tour decades before, with Nana’s letters in tow. Even when their car was broken into in Brussels, and their luggage stolen (including Nana’s letters), Sexton remained upbeat. But once they arrived in Italy in October, she began to unravel. She found it very difficult to be so far away from the two men in her life, Kayo and Orne. Worse yet, she had received a letter from Maxine Kumin in which Kumin told her that Kayo was hoping her trip to Europe would sever her ties with Orne and end therapy:

Anne, the reason he wants you to stay is that he thinks this year abroad will break your dependence on Orne and make it possible for you to quit treatment, or at least treatment with Orne. He has big hostility about him, calls him kook, etc., all of which you know very well but I didn’t. When I said not kook Kayo, he said please, that’s my defense. Don’t mess it up.^*

Perhaps as a result of reading the letter, Sexton’s journey through Europe soon dissolved as she experienced familiar chaotic feelings.^† She flirted with Louis, a German-speaking Yugoslavian man she had met in Rome, and had an affair with him in Capri. She later told Orne that Louis had flirted with several women in Capri, but chose Anne after she asked him if she could write down his story of being a prisoner of war in World War II. Concerned that she had become pregnant, she began making long calls to Orne in Boston in a desperate attempt to stabilize herself. By late October, unable to keep herself together any longer, she returned to Boston with what Orne, drawing from Erik Erikson, told her was a “leaky ego.”

Ashamed of her regression but eager to continue her work with Orne, Sexton resumed therapy in what seemed to be a further deterioration of her mental state. She became increasingly depressed as she neared her 35th birthday, November 9. Kayo had planned a big cocktail party for her birthday, which she did not want to attend. In fact, she could barely function. On November 7, she told Orne how suicidal she was, describing her birthday as “an ax hanging over me,” insistent that she would “like to bleed all over [her] books.” He told Sexton, “There’s one rule in psychotherapy; you’ve got to have a patient” (Middlebrook, 1991, p. 209). She was admitted to Westwood Lodge after the appointment. When Orne phoned Kayo to tell him he was sending Anne to Westwood, Kayo demanded to speak to her. Presumably fearing that Kayo would talk her out of it, Orne told him that there was not time. Kayo was enraged.

Two weeks later, having been released from Westwood with Kayo’s help, Sexton learned in a session that Orne was considering a move to another state. His announcement marks the beginning of the final six months of Sexton’s twice weekly therapy with him. I shall cite exchanges from three sessions in the first of these six months, November 1963. In all three sessions, Sexton asserts that her poetry is a sign of her progress in treatment, and Orne reminds her that her poetry is just a part of who she is.

The epigraph at the start of this chapter captures the essence of Sexton’s conversations with Orne about the value of her therapy. In various ways, Sexton wanted Orne to acknowledge the fact that she had made herself into a poet with his help. Could she ground herself in her poetic accomplishments? Did her creative accomplishments point to aspects of her psychiatric progress that might otherwise have been overlooked? Sexton returned to these questions many times, asserting her achievements and seeming to look for affirmation from her psychiatrist. As is captured in his forceful “no” in the epigraph, Orne persistently responded in much the same way: The poetry is not as important as the person.

It is tempting to conclude that in deflecting attention from Sexton’s poetry to her innate value as a human being, Orne contradicted his efforts to help her get better. After all, Sexton met Orne when she felt worthless; together, they had crafted her now brilliant career. But his decision to push Sexton toward a broader acceptance of herself as a person first, while still acknowledging her many talents, tells us something about his therapeutic technique. Orne trained as a psychiatrist in an environment dominated by Freudian conflict theory, rather rigid in its assumptions during the period. He would have learned to be an objective observer who helped patients correct defensive distortions of external and internal reality. Mental health came from being able to, as he once told Sexton, “keep reality straight.”^* Orne’s responses to Sexton’s queries about her value as a poet suggest that a patient as ill as Sexton gets better as she learns to distinguish between opposites: her defensive masks and the emotional realities they obscure. In keeping with theories of therapeutic action circulating at the time of the treatment, Orne urged Sexton to avoid the trap of intellectual discussions, which might conceal her “real” affect, with its accompanying memories from the past.^†

Sexton’s exchanges with Orne about the value of her poetry and her poetry itself assert her very different theory of the relationships between doctors, patients, and the products of therapy for both patients and psychiatrists. Long before the term analytic third became commonplace in psychoanalytic discourse, Sexton’s conversations with Orne and her poems reflect a vision of a psychiatrist and mental patient working together to construct something larger than the two people involved—a third thing, beyond the already existing “you” and “I.” Given her depression, agoraphobia, and suicidal preoccupations, Sexton’s desire to have Orne affirm the value of her poetry seems to have reflected her need to build a sense of identity that could fill the vast emptiness she experienced every day. If she had written published, much celebrated poetry, she could not be as worthless as she imagined; this is what she wanted her doctor to acknowledge. She also had cultural reasons to seek recognition as a public figure. Emerging as a significant American poet just as women writers were beginning to receive attention from places like the Radcliffe Institute, Sexton was exposed to new perspectives on women’s identities and realities. These perspectives challenged established notions of “reality” and “woman” that dominated the psychoanalytic world of the early 1960s.

As we listen to these November 1963 tapes, it becomes clear that while Orne invokes binary oppositions that reflect psychoanalytic concepts and discourses popular in his time, Sexton’s theory of therapeutic change has more in common with research about coconstruction and intersubjectivity in psychoanalysis and human development that became popular long after her death. Her vision of therapy as an architectural project, a cocreative construction, contrasts with Orne’s apparent view of therapy as an archeological uncovering, a removal of distortions of reality (Jimenez, 2008, p. 590). Most strikingly, their contrasting views of identity—for Orne, as already there, if distorted, and for Sexton as emergent—speak volumes about the power of the creative imagination to challenge existing structures of thought, even structures designed to define the psyche itself.

November 14, 1963: “I Mean, We Can Really Talk!”

When Kayo picked Sexton up from Westwood Lodge, he told her he wanted her to seek an outside consultation immediately. He doubted that she and Orne were making progress in therapy given her abrupt premature return from Europe and her almost immediate descent into a state in which she required hospitalization. In a previous session, Sexton commented to Orne that Kayo was jealous of their relationship, but Orne defended Kayo, saying that there was no reason not to consult another physician to assess their progress from a more objective point of view. This did not please Sexton, who often seemed to split her alliances between her husband and Orne. Despite Kayo’s insistence, Sexton did not sever her relationship with Orne; instead, she continued with Orne and asked Kayo to enter therapy (which he did).

In this November 14 session, Sexton began by defending her work with Orne. When Orne asked why she was reluctant to see another doctor, she protested. In the next five minutes, she and Orne discussed what doctor she might consult, including whether she should return to Dr. Riggs, a doctor she had seen the previous summer when Orne was away. Sexton explained her desire to remain with Orne:

Sexton: I feel like I want to continue treatment with you. Not just because I am transferred to you…. I think that our relationship, even though it is stormy, is really pretty good. I like to talk to you. I feel like I can. As much as I can talk to anyone. I mean really talk. You can use a lot of words.

Orne: Mmhmmm.

Sexton: And I think the tapes are very … I listen to them and it’s a different thing. In the first place I really hear you. Much more than I hear you here. Then again I hear me too, as much as I can bear to. Oh, I keep looking for some kind of magical thing. If there were just some …

Orne: Some? What?

Sexton: Well, I’d like to say to you do you think I will ever get well, and you’d say what do you mean by well.

Orne: Mmhmmm.

Sexton: But you know what I am talking about. And then when Kayo says, “Well, you know, he’s spent seven years and he hasn’t done much for you.” That’s pretty stupid. I haven’t done much. But then I want to list for him some of the gains. Because when I go back and when I have to list that childhood and my own attitudes when I began therapy then I see that it takes a long time …

[Two-minute exchange about which doctor]

Sexton: I’d like to say, why, this one’s impressed with my writing, why aren’t you? You know? I did it all for you.

Orne: I am impressed with your writing.

Sexton: What does that mean?

Orne: My interest is you, and I am impressed with your accomplishment.

Sexton: Would you be just as impressed if I’d never been anthologized and never awarded? No, because you know that you’re not a judge.

Orne: Probably not because I am not a judge.

Sexton: And neither would probably someone else.

Orne: No, that’s not true. I think in an area where I was competent to judge I would not need anyone else’s statement. Because some people I am very impressed with …

Sexton: Of course you know my history so well and you know me so well that what I write in a poem you already knew.

Orne: It’s not the issue. You don’t understand it. You see, if you say am I impressed with your work, yes, it’s very impressive. But you keep wanting me to be more interested in your poems than in you.

Sexton: Well, they are my accomplishment.

Orne: No, you are your accomplishment.

Sexton: Well, I haven’t done very well, let’s face it.

Orne: But this isn’t, you know first of all …

Sexton: But in this area I did accomplish something. And in another. I don’t know it may get shaky, because right now they’re at a pretty good age. But I hope that I’ve grown enough to catch up with Linda’s maturity when that arrives. But I have done that. That’s just a fact. Once I said I don’t want the children, I can’t be a mother, I don’t want them. Now I have the children. And I’m a pretty good … I am their mother. Not very good, but I am their mother.

Orne: And let me be very clear so there is no question between us. I view this [being a mother] as just as significant an accomplishment.

Sexton: I do too.

Orne: Even though [the children are] not anthologized. But, you know, that one I can judge.

Sexton: Yeah. Oh, I understand. Well, if I hadn’t been I couldn’t have stood myself any longer.

Orne: And you see when I say Dr. Riggs was impressed with your poetry, what I am saying is that it is fine that a therapist be interested in your work. It is not fine that he be more interested in your work than in you…. I want to keep reality straight for you.

Orne spoke in dichotomous terms in this excerpt, distinguishing between Sexton’s creative self and what she produced. On the one hand, there was Sexton’s personal “you,” the patient Orne saw in front of him. On the other hand, there were her poetic achievements, which could, with the wrong emphasis, obscure who she was. He provided the example of Dr. Riggs (whom Sexton had seen when Orne was away) as a psychiatrist who became distracted by the fact that Sexton was a famous poet.^* Orne knew that Sexton sometimes viewed her poetry as her only accomplishment. Many times in the years of recorded sessions, Sexton proclaimed that she did what she needed to—written her poems—and she was now ready to die. Orne always countered with statements about how the poetry was not her value, instructing her that she needed to learn to distinguish between her worth as a human being and her abilities as a poet. He was especially adamant about this in 1963, the year of Sylvia Plath’s death, for Sexton had, earlier that year, expressed her jealousy that Sylvia “[died] perfect” (Middlebrook, 1991, p. 216).

We must admire Orne’s efforts to prevent Sexton from killing herself and leaving her poetry for posterity. But we should also acknowledge that Orne’s position on who she was and what would harm her or make her feel better was historically situated. Orne and Sexton worked together at a time when the social context for women’s realities was largely domestic, and the professional climate in Boston offered its own very particular meanings for women’s accomplishments. Orne spoke with certainty about the value of Sexton as mother in this excerpt at the same time that he denied his ability to judge her poetic achievements. He was neither parent nor mother, and yet he told Sexton that he felt he had some expertise in the mothering arena but not in that of judging poetry. Indirectly, Orne placed a higher value on Sexton as a mother than on her identity as a prominent American poet. Sexton eagerly agreed with her assessment of the importance of her maternal role, but she seemed less convinced of his explanation of why he could not speak of her poetic achievements. It wa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• INTRODUCTION
• 1 “YOU, I, WE CREATED THE POET”
• 2 DID ANNE SEXTON KILL JOHN F. KENNEDY?
• 3 HOLDING HANDS AND LETTING GO—THE ROAD TO “FLEE ON YOUR DONKEY”
• 4 “THIS TERRIBLE IDEAL OF THE HAPPY FAMILY”
• 5 DANCING FOR YOUR DOCTOR—NOTES ON NARCISSISM
• 6 THE BLACK PANTS AND THE NEW BIKINI—OEDIPAL SCRIPTS
• 7 “THE DISCOVERY OF A HUMAN BEING”
• FLASH FORWARD—AN EPILOGUE: JULY 1964–FEBRUARY 1965
• FOR FURTHER READING
• REFERENCES
• INDEX