Writing Therapy

Lesson 3: Writing and health

Health and writing - Pennebaker Model

Lesson Three, Section Two. The Psychology of Writing and Health.

The most important work on this connection clearly is that based on the work of James Pennebaker. He does have a website on writing and health at http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/... and reading his book and Louise DeSalvo’s summary would be helpful. Even though the general idea has gone through some changes over the years and has been challenged by other psychologists, the simple idea he began his work with is still considered applicable,

In 1986, Pennebaker and his colleague, Sandra Beall, conducted some experiments on writing about feeling and discovered that many of those who wrote emotionally according to the guidelines made fewer visits to the college health center six months later. They were surprised and conducted some other experiments. Since that time many others have conducted similar studies with essentially the same results.

The theory they developed to account for these findings was that suppressing trauma was work and this work expended energy that could have been used by those people in improving their health. The basic idea is that people possess a certain amount of energy and if they use those resources in suppressing thoughts they won’t have that energy to fight disease and promote their health. I’d like you all to take a few minutes here and think about something you may want not to think about. This is the basis of some interesting psychological concepts in what is called self-deception - try not to think of a white bear. Can you do it?

Once again, I don’t feel like it is constructive for us to delve into these issues extensively.

While we are pausing here, you might find it worthwhile to consider the poems you have written or are writing from the perspective of trauma and healing. What happened to make you feel the way you did or do? Is it a feeling you have been ‘suppressing?” DeSalvo suggests that there will be no benefit, health or otherwise, if you are not ‘releasing‘ something that you have ‘suppressed.’ In other words, as they say, “no pain, no gain.” (this is consistent with what Pennebaker and others have said).

It should be noted that the explanation that Pennebaker and Beall came up with goes along with the general psychological perspective on therapy for those who have been traumatized (which we won’t get into here). It is also not contradicted by the perspectives we will be touching on in the next section on healing, the immune system, and spirituality.

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