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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse was therapist for the most famous, and famously troubled, poet of our time. Shortly before her own death, she agreed to speak about her treatment of Sylvia Plath, and the regrets that still haunted her decades after Plath's suicide.
Nov 29, 2004 | One evening in February 1963, Dr. Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse Beuscher returned home from a long day treating psychiatric patients. Her husband, William, also a psychiatrist, was already in bed. His custom was to retire early and read the evening paper. Ruth wearily mounted the stairs and sat on the bed next to him. Without any greeting or a look in her direction, he dryly asked, "Have you heard the news about Sylvia Plath?"
"No, what is it?" she replied, sensing the news was bad.
"She's dead," he said. "She committed suicide."
He returned to reading his paper without another word. Ruth quietly stood up and went downstairs to the kitchen. She poured herself a drink and sobbed. She remained downstairs for hours, thinking about Sylvia, and furious at her husband for the brutal way he told her about Sylvia's death. He knew of Ruth's relationship with Sylvia, including their compelling attachment to each other. When I interviewed Ruth, she said her marriage had been an unhappy one for many years. But the breaking point came that night when he told her of Sylvia's death. It took her four more years to make the move, in part because of her grief over Sylvia.
Ruth Barnhouse had been Sylvia Plath's psychiatrist since her hospitalization at McLean in 1953, a period in her life immortalized in her semi-autobiographical novel, "The Bell Jar." But most Plath observers don't realize just how close Barnhouse remained with Plath after she left McLean, and even after she left the country for her final ill-fated move to England with her husband, Ted Hughes. Plath biographer Paul Alexander is one exception. In an article for the Nation he wrote, "As I'd expected, she [Ruth Barnhouse] was a singular figure in Plath's life ... From September 1953 until February 1963 Barnhouse and Plath stayed in more or less constant contact either by mail or by telephone. During those years Plath wrote Barnhouse long, revealing letters."
Fascinated by "The Bell Jar" as an adolescent, I was part of a generation of women who felt that Sylvia Plath spoke to our desire to balance our personal ambition with close relationships, and the intense internal conflicts that produced. And as a psychoanalytic psychologist, I've written a great deal about the relationship between therapist and patient. So after having been left unsatisfied by all of the Plath biographies, I wanted to know more about what happened, and didn't happen, in Sylvia's treatment. I was primarily interested in why she did not remain in the treatment she so badly needed, yet could not give up her relationship with her psychiatrist. Had Ruth Barnhouse tried to keep Sylvia Plath in therapy, but was unable to? Or had she believed Plath had improved enough to leave her care?
I had my first, brief contact with Barnhouse when I interviewed her in 1990 for an academic paper I was working on. Then in 1998 I reconnected with her again, this time asking whether I could come and interview her about her life, especially about the long-term impact of having treated Sylvia Plath. I offered to travel from Milwaukee to Nantucket, Mass., and stay the weekend in a nearby inn if she was willing to discuss her relationship with her famous patient. She eagerly agreed to meet with me and even allow me to tape our conversations.
Plath's last journals, when she was communicating with Ruth mostly through letters, mysteriously disappeared, and her final one was destroyed after her death by Ted Hughes, who said that he never wanted their children to see it. The letters from Ruth to Sylvia, held in the Smith College library, will not be fully available to the public for decades, though a reputable source has described them as "surprisingly intimate." And Ruth Barnhouse burned the dozens of letters she received from Sylvia while she lived in England. So an interview with Ruth offered the only opportunity for real answers about their relationship.
What I learned that December weekend, on Nantucket, surprised me. Ruth was 75 years old, still intellectually sharp and possessing a great sense of humor. She was also brutally honest. Always entertaining, she used her formidable intellect to forge strong opinions on almost everything. Yet I couldn't help noticing that she was quick to provide simplistic answers to certain difficult questions, including some of my most pressing queries about Plath. In my first minutes with her, I knew I was not going to get all I had hoped for. But I stayed the weekend. I couldn't walk away from what might be my last chance to learn more about this historic relationship.
