Investigating bipolar expression in confessional poetry

Abstract The study of bipolar disorder’s influence on literary expression has predominantly focused on American writers with minimal orientation directed toward non-Anglophone authors. This research aims to expand the psycholinguistic analysis to include European writers, comparing their works with those of established English-language authors. To identify patterns and divergences in how bipolar disorder manifests across different cultural and linguistic contexts in literature, and to explore universal threads connecting bipolar writers. Comparative analysis of linguistic and cognitive expressions using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), corpus analysis, and metaphor detection methods applied to the digitized works of seven renowned writers: Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, John Berryman, Attila József, and Józef Czechowicz. Shared psycholinguistic features among these writers included prevalent temporal discontinuity, heightened use of metaphorical language and symbolism, shared focus on existential themes and abstraction, and presence of cognitive dissonance in writing. Variations in syntactic complexity, rhythmic irregularities, and thematic preoccupations were observed among non-Anglophone writers.