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Audris Wong
English 120 Section 23
Andrew Laudel, Instructor
Writing and Healing
When people are unable to work through emotional challenges on their own, or require
guidance not found anywhere else, they seek out professional help. In his blog in Psychology
Today, Ryan Howes, Ph.D. says making the choice to attend therapy for someone is entering a
period of introspection that may last weeks in the short term, or years in the long term.
Depending on the therapist, different approaches and techniques are used with the client. An
emerging exercise in talk therapy is the use of writing. Howes says that Clients are allowed
introspect all they want between sessions, and writing is a great way to focus and articulate their
thoughts and feelings. For many writers, their work, regardless of genre, gives this sort of
introspection. In several ways, shapes and forms, writing is a product of self-exploration and
self-discovery. Those are not always the primary goal; the goal is to put down into words some
truth that exists for them. In doing so writers come to learn a little more about themselves.
Therefore in this context, therapy would be defined as a process towards personal growth.
Steve Almond is a writer for The New York Times Magazine and in one particular
article, he tells his story about earning his Master of Fine Arts in fiction and his struggle with
depression. In the MFA program Almond says he and his fellow students worked on the
suspiciously familiar afflictions of [their] characters and realized that therapy was the
unconscious impulse that drove them write. Almond takes the opportunity to make the
distinction that not all writers are damaged people, but presents a bold theory- that the spread of
psychopharmacology facilitated a cultural shift in fiction writing for therapeutic effects. He
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explains that in writing workshops hes led, improving ones prose almost always involves a
direct engagement with [ones] inner life, as well as a demand for greater empathy and
disclosure and these goals are undeniably therapeutic. Almond compares the community
experience with writing programs, workshops, and conferences with writing in the context of the
Internet community. He says of the first three, that They receive professional guidance, and the
possibility exists, however gossamer, that they will mature into genuine artists. Try finding that
online. Writers regardless of age and background, no matter if theyre published authors, or just
the grandmother down the street trying to document her stories, share a common motive, and that
motive is exactly what people look for in fiction. He calls this motive the refuge of stories.
Almond also mentions J.D. Salinger, and Kurt Vonnegut and gives examples on how their
renowned works always came from something personal to them. For J. D. Salinger in The
Catcher in the Rye it was about his own fears and anxieties about life, and for Kurt Vonnegut it
was something more all encompassing. When asked about the major themes in his writing,
Vonnegut was quoted saying I write again and again about my family.
Playwright, novelist, and poet Pearl Cleage documented everything in her youth from the
loneliness of being a writer to her experiences with sex and drugs. She began journaling from the
age of eleven and continued it well into her twenties. In 2014 Cleage decided to make a bold
move and turned eighteen years of journals into a memoir called Things I Should Have Told My
Daughter: Lies, Lessons & Love Affairs. In a recent NPR interview, Cleage describes having to
ask herself are you prepared to really show who you were on the way to being who you are?
And the answer either had to be yes, I'm prepared to show myself, warts and all, or no, I'm going
to clean it up and make it kind of a fictional character who always knew, who was always
generous and kind and compassionate. But that's not my intention... Referring to her journey to
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becoming a writer Cleage says, I felt really protective of my 20-year-old self. I felt really
protective of my 25, 26, you know, 30-year-old self because I was very innocent about a lot of
things - didn't have as much access as I thought I had. So that I felt, you know, reading
sometimes over these entries when I'm 20, 22 years old, I would shake my head and say who let
this little girl out in the world by herself? You know, she's stumbling around, she's making all
kinds of mistakes. But I never felt like I wasn't moving ahead. I felt good about that, that I was
always trying to figure it out, trying to do what I had conceived of as the right thing. And I think
overall, the whole thing made me really realize that my search has always been to try to figure
out how to tell the truth.
A prolific pioneer of researching and promoting the benefits of such journaling is Gillie
Bolton. In 2002 Bolton was research fellow in medical humanities at the University of Sheffield
and much of the literature on the growth of therapeutic writing includes her name. One of her
many books on the subject, The Therapeutic Potential of Creative Writing is a self proclaimed
straightforward guide on the reflective practice theory. It offers advice on how to trust yourself in
aspects of writing such as when to write, when to stop writing, when to ask for help, and why
you should be writing in the first place. In her introduction, Bolton states first, if you trust
yourself you cannot write the wrong thing. Second, that trust will help you write material that
you will learn from. The kind of writing guided in the book will feel like a gift to oneself.
Third, that material will never be something that you will find unable to read or relate to. This
does not mean that parts of the process will never be painful or stressful. What Bolton says is
that these things will be what is necessary at that time.
Bolton states that some of her readers might be teachers, clinicians, psychotherapists,
certain kinds of group leaders, or even an already established writer. In Writing Cures: an
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introductory handbook of writing in counseling and therapy Kate Thompson, a BACP (British
Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy) and senior accredited supervisor and counselor
trained in London and at The Center for Journal Therapy, outlines the different types of writing
that can be used by a client. Writing Cures is a collection of essays written by various clinicians
in the field, and is edited by Gillie Bolton and peers. The writing techniques that Thompson
mentions include sprints, lists, captured moments, unsent letters, dialogue, and feedback (72). On
her website, Bolton explains that an individuals relationship with a teacher/therapist/mentor
figure and an individuals relationship with their own writing has to be differentiated. She says,
In all personal and professional development processes (and therapy and counselling) the
personal relationship is key. But with writing, the primary personal relationship is with the self
as first reader: the self becomes the vital interlocutor.
What all these writers are saying is that writing offers something that is slightly different
from talk-therapy with a therapist. Like Bolton said, the self becomes the vital interlocutor.
What that means is that its the self directing the self, and the self guiding the self. In music, an
interlocutor is a master of ceremonies in a minstrel show. In politics, it is someone who
informally explains the views of a government and also can relay messages back to a
government. In law, it is an order of any Scottish Court, and in linguistics, it is any participant in
discourse. In reflective writing, it means that the author engaged in conversation with themselves
and learned something brand new, so whatever insight they gained was from their own creative
process.




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Works Cited

Almond, Steve. Why Talk Therapy Is on the Wane and Writing Workshops Are on the Rise.
The New York Times Magazine. The New York Times Co., 23 March 2012. Web. 21
March 2014.

Bolton, Gillie. The Therapeutic Potential of Creative Writing: Writing Myself. London: Jessica
Kingsley Publishers, 1999. Print.

___________. Biography. Gillie Bolton. Gillie Bolton, 2014. Web. 25 May 2014.


Howes, Ryan. Journaling in Therapy: Supersized therapy? Write on! Psychology Today.
Sussex Publishers, LLC, 26 Jan. 2011. Web. 14 April 2014.

Interlocutor. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 9 July 2013.
Web. 25 May 2014.

Keenan, Melinda J., Lumley, Vicki A., & Schneider, Robert B. A Group Therapy Approach to
Treating Combat Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Interpersonal Reconnection Through
Letter Writing. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research & Practice. 17 March. 2014. Web. 26
March. 2014.

Martin, Michel. Playwright Pearl Cleage Opens Up. Author Interviews. NPR, 2014. Web. 1
May. 2014.

Pollard, Jim. As easy as ABC. The Observer. Guardian News and Media Ltd., 27 July 2002.
Web. 13 April 2014.


Thompson, Kate. "Journal therapy writing as a therapeutic tool." Writing Cures: an
introductory handbook of writing in counseling and therapy. Ed. Gillie Bolton, Stephanie
Howlett, Colin Lago and Jeannie K. Wright. New York City: Brunner-Routledge, 2004.
72-84. Print.