Tell It Slant: History,Memory,and Imagination in the Healing Writing Workshop

Abstract

This paper investigates the practice of using writing as a healing modality with patients traumatized by the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. Based on the clinical experience of patients in an outpatient writing class, it investigates the stressors particular to cancer patients and the ways in which these stressors may affect inhibition and the ability to disclose. It poses the questions: How do we avoid retraumatization when facilitating a writing experience for this population? How does expressive writing—writing that asks the patient to confront trauma by expressing both the cognitive and emotional aspects of the trauma—compare with imaginative writing in effectively allowing for the three stages of recovery from trauma: safety, remembrance and mourning, and reconnection? Current research on expressive writing and the Pennebaker paradigm are discussed, as well as the difficulty of accessing memories “encrypted” by trauma and incorporating them into a life narrative. The resistance to memoir writing in both patient examples and in the work of a noted writer is investigated. Theories related to memory plasticity and the importance of the imagination in creating memories are considered as ways to understand how fiction, in particular, is able to address the emotional truths of the past and so allow for appropriate mourning without risking retraumatization.