Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse

Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse (October 23, 1923 – May 5, 1999), also known by her married name Ruth Beuscher, was an American psychiatrist, theologian, and Episcopal priest. Best known for being the psychiatrist of Sylvia Plath, she corresponded with her since they met at McLean 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 at Smith College).

Early life Barnhouse was born to American parents near Grenoble, France, in 1923. The family moved to Philadelphia when she was two. Her father, Donald Grey Barnhouse, took up a teaching position at the University of Pennsylvania and was pastor of the Tenth 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.

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 at Barnard College, where she completed her bachelor's degree, and continued on to Columbia University Medical School, where she earned a medical degree.

Sylvia Plath correspondence In 1953, when she was a resident psychiatrist at McLean hospital, she developed a relationship with a college-aged Plath. Later, when Plath published The Bell Jar, Barnhouse was reincarnated as the character Dr. Nolan, the protagonist's psychiatrist during her stay at a mental hospital.

At the beginning of the fourteen letters at Smith College, Plath discusses her pregnancies and her and husband Ted Hughes's writing careers, reflecting on how she will sustain her creative life as a mother. 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.

Publications Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar, Harper, 2013. Plath, Sylvia. The Letters of Sylvia Plath: Volume I, 1940–1956. Edited by Peter K. Steinberg and Karen V. Kukil, Harper, 2017. Plath, Sylvia. The Letters of Sylvia Plath: Volume II, 1956–1963. Edited by Peter K. Steinberg and Karen V. Kukil, Harper, 2018. Plath, Sylvia. The Unabridged Journals. Edited by Karen V. Kukil, Anchor, 2000. Barnhouse, Ruth Tiffany. Homosexuality: A Symbolic Confusion, Seabury Press, 1977. Barnhouse, Ruth Tiffany and Holmes, Urban T., ed., Male and Female: Christian Approaches to Sexuality, Seabury Press, 1976.