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When the attempt to maintain stable aggressive cathexes of object-representations differentiated from self-representations fails, there results a preponderance of primitive identifications that may cause the ego to be overwhelmed by unneutralized aggressive energies. The life and poetry of Sylvia Plath illustrate what I have termed 'fusion with the victim,' (cf., Orgel, 1973), a regressive vicissitude of identification with the aggressor.
Sylvia Plath was born in Boston on October 27, 1932.1 Her father came to the United States at age fifteen from a town in the Polish Corridor. He was the author of a well-known scientific treatise, Bumblebees, and was further distinguished for his work in ornithology and ichthyology. Her mother was born in Boston of Austrian parents and met her husband while studying for a master's degree in German. At Sylvia's birth, Otto Plath announced, 'All I want from life from now on is a son born two and a half years to the day'. And on April 27, 1935, a son, Warren Joseph, was born. Sylvia and her brother grew up in the seashore town of Winthrop, Massachusetts. Her childhood was filled with sea memories—gathering shells, making toys from objects picked up on the beach, collecting starfish in jars and watching them grow back lost arms,2 dreaming of Spain