Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse (October 23, 1923 – May 5, 1999), also known by her married nameRuth Beuscher, was an American psychiatrist, theologian, and Episcopal priest. Best known for being the psychiatrist ofSylvia Plath, she corresponded with her since they met atMcLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts following Plath's breakdown in 1953. Though Plath destroyed most of their letters, fourteen from Plath to Barnhouse remain (not including the two from Barnhouse to Plath in the Sylvia Plath papers atSmith College).[1]
Barnhouse was born to American parents nearGrenoble, France, in 1923. The family moved toPhiladelphia when she was two. Her father,Donald Grey Barnhouse, took up a teaching position at theUniversity of Pennsylvania[2] and was pastor of theTenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia from 1927 to 1960. She was homeschooled by her grandmother Tiffany, whose late husband was a distant cousin of the founder of Tiffany & Co.[2] With a high IQ, Barnhouse was admitted toVassar College at fourteen and enrolled at sixteen. Meanwhile, she had met her first husband, Francis C. Edmonds Jr., at a religious retreat. Edmonds graduated from Princeton University in 1940. They eloped in 1941 after her father forbade them from marrying.[3]
Shortly thereafter, she regretted her marriage but was hesitant about ending it as she was pregnant. In 1943, she gave birth to a second child. In 1944, at twenty-one, she enrolled atBarnard College, where she completed her bachelor's degree, and continued on toColumbia University Medical School, where she earned a medical degree.[3] She left Edmonds toward the end of her first year at Barnard. He, then a medical doctor, assumed full responsibility for the children. His parents took care of them until the divorce went through and he had remarried in 1947.[4] Divorce and child custody were topics Barnhouse would later discuss in her letters to Plath. Following the divorce, she met William Beuscher, her peer at Columbia, who likewise would go on to complete a residency in psychiatry at McLean. They married and had five children, but she divorced him later, citing emotional abuse and alcoholism.[3]
While still a full-time psychiatrist and mother, Barnhouse became involved in the Episcopal church in her town. She enrolled part-time at theWeston College of Theology inCambridge, Massachusetts, and became a full-time resident in 1973 on track to obtain a master's degree in theology. However, after the Episcopal Church allowed the ordination of women in 1976, she was ordained a deacon in 1978 and a priest in 1980. She taught atSouthern Methodist University'sPerkins School of Theology.[5][4]
In 1953, when she was a resident psychiatrist at McLean hospital, she developed a relationship with a college-aged Plath. Later, when Plath publishedThe Bell Jar, Barnhouse was reincarnated as the character Dr. Nolan, the protagonist's psychiatrist during her stay at a mental hospital.[2] According to Barnhouse, Plath was one of her first patients.[3] They would stay in touch long after Plath left McLean, up until one week before Plath's death.[6]
At the beginning of the fourteen letters at Smith College, Plath discusses her pregnancies and her and husbandTed Hughes's writing careers, reflecting on how she will sustain her creative life as a mother.[6][7][8] The tone becomes less optimistic, however, when she describes her suspicions of Ted's affair. Barnhouse (though referred to by Plath in her letters as “Dr. Beuscher”) instructs Plath to hire a good lawyer and to bar Ted from her bed and her home.[9]
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