Educational Testing Service

A consistent research finding in creativity research has been the tendency of poets— especially female poets—to suffer from mental illness. We explore (a) Why poets? and (b) Why female poets? We posit that poetry may attract those with a predisposition toward illness, the domain of poetry may particularly reward those who exhibit illness, and unusual aspects of the domain of poetry writing may increase the likelihood of poets succumbing to illness. These domain-specific aspects of writing poetry affect men and women alike. In addition, the greater difficulty that women tend to experience in ignoring extrinsic motivational constraints may cause successful female poets to have an even higher incidence of psychological stress, and of mental illness, than male poets. If wild my breast and sore my pride I bask in dreams of suicide If cool my heart and high my head I think, “How lucky are the dead.” (Dorothy Parker, 1991) Our hospital was famous and had housed many grea