Joshua Smyth (2002) and other researchers have concluded that expressive writing is linked to a general improvement of our immune systems. More specifically, James Pennebaker (1990, 8) summarizes the physiological benefits of expressive writing, which include
better lung function among asthma patients and lower pain and disease severity among arthritis sufferers (Smyth et al. 1999), higher white blood cell counts among AIDS patients (Petrie, Booth, and Pennebaker 1998), and less sleep disruption among patients with metastatic breast cancer. (De Moor et al. 2002)
Singer and Singer (2008) also evaluate research results of writing’s positive effects on psychological issues, such as depression, the loss of jobs, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and intimate-partner violence (IPV). Lepore and Smyth (2002) and other researchers have concluded that expressive writing is linked to a general improvement of our immune system. Here, too, Pennebaker (2004) offers a more specific account of expressive writing’s psychological effects, as one of experiencing
immediate feelings of sadness but long-term effects of happiness; lower levels of depressive symptoms and general anxiety; improved performance in school; enhanced ability to deal with one’s social life; reduced feelings of anger; increased employability or success in job interviews; and increased feelings of connection with others, [or] social integration (8–11).
Expressive writing therapies are used in major medical organizations, such as Duke University, North Carolina; the City of Hope Cancer Center and The John Wayne Cancer Institute, California; and Piedmont Hospital, Georgia. Writing is used in the treatment of physically and psychologically abused women, AIDS/HIV patients, soldiers experiencing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and suicidal people (Anderson and MacCurdy 2000).
In current and clinical contexts, there’s little doubt that composing through trauma positively affects our physical and emotional health. While these “new scientific facts” provide assurances to many people, we shouldn’t be surprised at how writing has forever helped us. For eons, writing has breathed life into human culture. Writing systems using graphic symbols to represent the sounds of a language seem to have evolved independently in Mesoamerica (650 BCE), China (1250 BCE), and Mesopotamia (3200 BCE) (Schmandt-Besserat 2006). Writing is the basis of government, law, religion, economy, science, art, and technology. In huge and grand fashion, writing has been key to the development and survival of the human race.
We’ve always regarded the values of writing as self-evident. After all, through the mists of time, we had only to look around at the rich, written products surrounding us—from the magnificent library in ancient Alexandria, to the timeless beauty of Shakespeare’s King Lear, to the strength of a Milton sonnet, to the brilliance of Mark Twain, to the insights of Joan Didion. We know the inestimable value of writing because it has forever sustained us, guided us, and moved us forward.
Our Storied Past
Composing through trauma works because it’s been effectively practiced throughout human history, including by some impressive minds. Thomas Jefferson, for example, penned a long dialogue, “My Head and My Heart,” in which his two internal forces debated with each other over his deep affection (if not love) for Maria Cosway, a young married woman he had met in Paris when he served as the US Minister to France in 1786 (Brodie 1974). The dialogue comprised the bulk of Jefferson’s long letter, beginning with his sadness at seeing Cosway leave France for her home in England.
I was at home. Seated by my fireside, solitary & sad, the following dialogue took place between my Head & my Heart:
Head. Well, friend, you seem to be in a pretty trim.
Heart. I am indeed the most wretched of all earthly beings. Overwhelmed with grief, every fibre of my frame distended beyond its natural powers to bear, I would willingly meet whatever catastrophe should leave me no more to feel or to fear.
Head. These are the eternal consequences of your warmth & precipitation. This is one of the scrapes into which you are ever leading us. You confess your follies indeed; but still you hug & cherish them; & no reformation can be hoped, where there is no repentance.
Heart. Oh, my friend! This is no moment to upbraid my foibles. I am rent into fragments by the force of my grief! If you have any balm, pour it into my wounds; if none, do not harrow them by new torments. Spare me in this awful moment! (493–94)
While the most common form of writing through trauma is direct, expressive language (discussed later in this chapter), all forms of writing can be therapeutic: from poetry to drama, from letters to obituaries, from lists to PowerPoint presentations. An imagined dialogue is a more creative form that emphasizes interaction and thinking, as one voice responds to another, allowing ideas to evolve and become more comprehensible. Jefferson’s imaginary dialogue served as a kind of “bridge”—from his internal conflict to reality, from his feelings of fragmentation, to a greater sense of wholeness. I believe this dialogue provided Jefferson a bit of “distance” from his struggle, hence allowing him greater control.
Several decades later, another US President engaged in poetic language, which was, in all likelihood, a way for him to express and distance himself from personal trauma. Here are the final three stanzas from his nine-stanza poem, “The Suicide’s Soliloquy,” identified by historian Richard L. Miller (Shenk J. 2004):
Yes! I’m prepared, through endless night,
To take that fiery berth!
Think not with tales of hell to fright
Me, who am damn’d on earth!
Sweet steel! Come forth from your sheath,
And glist’ning, speak your powers;
Rip up the organs of my breath,
And draw my blood in showers!
I strike! It quivers in that heart
Which drives me to this end;
I draw and kiss the bloody dart,
My last—my only friend!
This poem was first published in the August 25, 1838, Sangamon Journal, by a twenty-nine year-old Abraham Lincoln. Scholars agree that Lincoln suffered bouts of serious depression, twice talking about suicide to his friends. Compared to today’s standards, the poem is over-wrought, but that was the style back then. Nonetheless, its imagery and metaphor are starkly effective.
Imagery and metaphor have long been staples of writing for purposes of healing. They work because our minds themselves are metaphoric. We use such a poetic language as another “window” for describing problems and finding solutions. Poetic language, especially metaphor, can transfer meaning from one experience or concept to that of another. Casting our thoughts in imagery, metaphor, or imagined dialogue, as Jefferson did, can loosen or remove the issue that is tied to us.
One way that poetic language accomplishes this is by its interactive quality: Its ambiguity often suggests more than one possible meaning, so it forces us to think, to consider more than one alternative. When we see options (as readers and as writers), then we are invited to think independently. The specificity of poetic language largely bypasses linear, logical thinking. This concreteness also helps us bypass resistance, if we have experienced the same message in generic terms. Therefore, (and to conjecture for a moment) Lincoln may have directly told himself that suicide was wrong; his friends may have explicitly told him it was wrong, or may have even commanded him not to think about it or do it. Let’s assume that merely telling him does not work, nor would telling him again be effective. This is the point where the indirectness of poetic language may be most effective; Lincoln implies, but doesn’t say, he would commit suicide.
Nearly a hundred years after Lincoln, another US President, Harry S. Truman, engaged in extensive writing that he called “longhand spasms” (McCullough 1993). When facing complex issues and vexing problems, Truman would often check in, alone, to Kansas City’s Hotel Muelbach, where he would write his way out of the problem. Following is an example of such writing from early in Truman’s career, when he served as a Jackson County Judge (now referred to as a “County Commissioner”).
This sweet associate