Therapeutic value of creative writing

An author’s reflections on the therapeutic value of creative writing

Arnfrid Beier, author of LOVE LIES: A Journal

Growing awareness

One particular feature of my training as a therapeutic counsellor was that I had to keep a practice journal. In the beginning I thought that this would amount to no more than keeping some basic records of the various stages of my learning and personal development. I soon discovered that as I was writing, something else was going on inside me. Someone was talking and someone else was listening at the same time, as if two people were holding a dialogue in my head. When I stopped for a moment, I made a further discovery.

In the gaps between the writing, ‘talking’ and ‘listening’ changed to reflecting. Now the paragraphs in front of me were like mirrors reflecting their words back to me, endlessly refracting their primary lexical meanings, a circumstance made worse by the fact that English is not my mother tongue. This created doubt and uncertainty in my mind. I began to feel vulnerable. I realised that for me journal writing had to be more than mere record keeping. It turned out to be an art form as complex and challenging as writing a novel. Writing my journal became a powerful therapeutic process for me, because of its analytical and reflective demands but especially because of its artistic and creative challenges.

I experienced writing my journal as a highly focused, almost meditative activity, which took me beyond the written word to a deeper sense of self, and to a more intuitive experience of reality. On one level, it proved to be a practical tool for examining my learned attitudes, beliefs, motivations and behaviours. On another level, it set free powerful artistic and creative energies, giving to my life a new quality of intensity, but at the same time making me painfully aware of the inaccuracies and ambiguities inherent in ordinary, everyday language. Living in this kind of semantic suspense, with ambiguity, uncertainty and vulnerability as my constant companions, gradually became less uncomfortable, and often from beyond internal dialogue and reflection there arose – in wholly unexpected ways – light and understanding.

In search of meaning

At the same time, I realised that through my self-disclosing, intense style of writing I expressed and articulated emotional and spiritual processes of change that were not unique to me but experienced by many other human beings. Western literature abounds with ‘journals’, ‘diaries’ and related writings that all share this intense, passionate need for self-expression and self-articulation, sometimes narcissistic or pathological in origin, but often a genuine search for meaning and, by implication, self-realisation. To mention but a few works: Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf, Rilke’s Notebook of Malte Laurids Brigge, Amiel’s Journals, Robert Walser’s Jakob von Gunten, Söderberg’s Doctor Glas, Anne Frank’s Diary, Proust’s À la Recherche du Temps Perdu, Sartre’s Nausea, Barbellion’s Journal of a Disappointed Man and Knut Hamsun’s Hunger.

Already in ancient Greece books were regarded as possessing a therapeutic quality, as the watchword ‘medicine for the soul’ chiselled over the portal to the library at Thebes tells us. In more recent times, Dr. Neil Frude of Cardiff developed a scheme for books to be prescribed like medicine, helping patients with problems such as stress, anxiety, anger, low self-esteem, certain types of depression, addictive behaviours and other mental health issues to get better. However, whilst reading some type of literature may have had a positive therapeutic effect on some patients, writing could add a further dimension to the therapeutic process, as it heals and empowers the patients by allowing them to articulate, express and take responsibility for their own thoughts, feelings and actions.

This became particularly clear to me when I was still working as a student counsellor. Some students had a strong need for self-expression and self-articulation through the written word. They would often, without being asked, write their problems down, either in the form of simple notes or even as poetry, and sometimes as letters to specific persons or, in particularly painful circumstances, as intense confessional outpourings. A cathartic effect could be seen immediately, but the opportunity it gave the students to reflect on their written material afterwards enhanced their capacity for gaining insight and understanding at their own pace and in their own time. It could be said therefore that the free flow of speech in a face-to-face counselling session becomes like a form of slowed down ‘speech’ in the act of writing. Or, as Kate Thompson so aptly puts it: “Writing is speaking and reading is listening in the conversation with the self.”

Waking up to oneself

It is through writing as an act of creative self-expression that an inner ferment begins, waking the psyche from its sleep or, to use Heidegger’s expression, from the ‘forgetfulness of existence’, whilst at the same time touching off the process of positive change and healing. And it is my belief that therapeutic writing engenders a more holistic healing process than music, art, dance or even drama therapy alone, since therapeutic writing brings into play all three centres of the personality at once: mind, heart and body. There is the physical act of writing down in so many word symbols the story that is told from the heart. In this sense, therapeutic writing has something unique for me, although it shares many aspects with other forms of self-expression.

Music, art and dance therapies are considered by many to be more direct ways to spontaneous intuitive insight and to deeper understanding, reflecting the old Zen adage ‘speaking about a thing is missing the mark’. There is of course always the danger of getting bogged down in the description of experience, its intellectualisation, and thus missing experience itself. Chuang Tzu makes it clear, however, that language and, by implication, reflective thought can be used in an equally powerful way to initiate self-realisation. “Fishing baskets are employed to catch fish; but when the fish are got, the men forget the baskets; snares are employed to catch hares; but when the hares are got, men forget the snares. Words are employed to convey ideas; but when the ideas are grasped, men forget the words.”

Trying to make sense of my counselling life, whether as a trainee or client, would have been more than difficult to achieve through music, art, dance or drama therapy. I found writing things down, even if only in the form of catchwords or as brief diary notes, to be of immense value. And this was for the same reasons Karen Horney gives in her book Self-Analysis: “Frequently a person will miss the significance of a connection at first sight, but will notice it later when he lets his mind dwell on his notes. Findings or unanswered questions that are not well entrenched are often forgotten, and a return to them may revive them. Or he may see the old findings in a different light.”

Reading, on the other hand, has always been an important preparatory step in my learning process as a counselling trainee, whether this involved reflecting on my own development or on that of others. A good example of the latter is given in Irvin Yalom’s collection of short stories entitled Love’s Executioner and Other Tales Of Psychotherapy. Here, the psychotherapist-turned-writer Yalom has fictionalised a number of case studies of some of his clients. Whilst we are allowed to observe his ‘heroes’ closely and empathetically, we cannot help taking an occasional questioning look at ourselves and indeed finding therapeutic value in doing so. Though, our progressively strengthening empathic alliance with the central characters in these stories does place us, the readers, perforce in the position of clients and the storyteller in the position of a therapist. Clearly, the tales – whatever generous measure of empathy and compassion their author may have shared out to both protagonists and readers – are always told from the vantage-point of an ‘authority’ figure, the therapist.

Night-sea crossing

By far the most challenging step in my learning process was writing my journal, a highly focused activity, which almost always generated thought-transcending and reality-transforming creative energies in me. As mentioned earlier, journals and diaries have been successfully used for a long time as vehicles for fictional and non-fictional literature, though not always with the writers’ avowed and conscious intention to bring about therapeutic change in them. Yet this is of course a major aim of therapeutic writing and the basic tenet in any positive psychology. To quote Karen Horney again: “Whatever he (the diarist) sets down on paper should serve one purpose only, that of recognizing himself.” To reach the goal of self-recognition, the diarist sets out on a dangerous voyage into the unknown, consciously charting the delusional movements of the mind and learning how to navigate safely between Scylla and Charybdis. Then, when least expected, a new dawn greets the diarist over the horizon.

Is this the old cliché of a happy ending? Of course it isn’t! What counts is the journey. What appears like an ending is only a hiatus, an interlude. The show must go on. And in life one never can be sure. Our self-appointed hero, the diarist, has chosen the path of personal growth and development, a journey from the outer to the inner – a gradual shifting away of attention from the outer form, or perceived reality, to an inner plane of seeing and knowing, or a higher level of consciousness. The accent is always on change, change in a positive sense. In much of twentieth-century literature, if there is any change, we see personalities in disintegration, for example Maugham’s Christmas Holiday or The Moon and Sixpence, or Greene’s The Heart of the Matter. And often, what may initially appear like change is revealed in the end to be no more than stereotyped personalities being moved around in the various episodes of their stories like so many pieces of furniture repositioned again and again to produce different visual effects.

Journal writing with a therapeutic dimension could add an exciting new quality to the function and purpose of fictional literature in the twenty-first century, a healing quality that might not only help the writer himself, but also influence our society in positive ways. My own recently published novel Love Lies (A Journal) shows how the protagonist, André, a middle-aged university lecturer on the brink of self-destruction, benefits by writing his problems down in his journal, by reflecting on their meaning and then acting on the insights that he has gained. He goes through many inner sufferings before he reaches a degree of understanding and knowing. Over time, André learns to take responsibility for his thoughts, feelings and actions. Slowly, he ‘wakes up to himself’ and, in the end, outwits the forces of confusion, chaos and destruction – his personal demons – that have besieged his inner world for so long.

Healing the soul

My intention was to write a novel that would fall into the category of ‘literature as medicine’ or ‘bibliotherapy’. Whilst the protagonist’s story is his own story, the psychological patterns and processes that are revealed (or alluded to) through his self-reflection and action are universal.

Viewed in this light, Love Lies (A Journal) can be used as a teaching and learning aid. By reading André’s self-disclosing journal, students or trainees enter into a kind of fellowship and an empathic alliance. This may help them raise their levels of awareness and deepen their understanding – by contemplating the issues concerned in their own journals or by linking these to their group work.

In my experience, not all counselling trainees or clients warm to the idea of writing about their problems in a self-revealing, reflective and creative way, least of all with André’s intensity and passion. Nevertheless, by allowing trainees, clients and other readers to join André on his journey of self-discovery, their need to write about themselves may be awakened.

Yalom takes his readers through a similar sequence of steps in his short stories, starting from the position of a therapist and ending with the possibility of the readers picking up pen and paper themselves. He is working with his clients trying to understand their ways of being, writing down their case studies, which on one level is also therapeutic for him, at the same time leading on to the readers getting therapeutic help from reading and indirectly being encouraged to write for themselves.

A therapeutic and diagnostic tool

In a clinical setting, Love Lies (A Journal) may be used as a therapeutic and diagnostic tool. For instance, being invited to review the novel, clients or patients may feel greatly empowered, as this can give them a real sense of responsibility and thus raise their levels of self-confidence and self-esteem.

The written critique of the novel or part of the novel – to be produced by the clients or patients in the form of a short review, report or essay – may help shed more light on their difficulties and problems. Or, at least, it may yield valuable material, clues and pointers that can help them and the therapist to penetrate beneath the conscious level.

References:

1. Horney, K. (1970) Self-Analysis. New York: Norton; 171 – 172.

2. Thompson, K. (2006) Coming out as Writing Therapists; Lapidus, Vol. 2, 20.

3. Chuang Tzu. (1971) Translated by James Legge, arranged by Clae Waltham. New York: Ace Books; chap. 26.

4. Beier, A. (2006) Love Lies: A Journal. England: Eaglepeace Publications Ltd.

Lapidus, Spring/Summer, 2007, Vol. 2, Issue 4, pp. 7-10

Personal development through writing ...