Tilling the Connection between Writing and Psycho-Emotional Healing

The following is comprised of excerpts from the theoretical segment of my Master's thesis, Longsuffering. Some have been rearranged and/or revised for the sake of logic and chronology. The end note is an addendum written at a later date to reflect upon this discussion via a larger community-based scale.

My mother was diagnosed with Mesothelioma in July of 2010; she died eight months later. The day after she died, I was going through her possessions and found a book of letters that she'd addressed to my sister and me about us, our father, our family -- and of course my mother, herself. The letters span the decade from 1994 to 2004 and tell tales that I'd already known (but from an entirely different perspective), and tales that I never knew. They held deeply personal confessions, anecdotes rife with a sarcasm and humor so familiar that the woman who wrote them might as well have been in the same room speaking them into my ear.

I held onto the book for four years, knowing of its poignancy, but never quite realizing the why of it. It was not until I entered into a graduate English course at Belmont University called "Trauma and Writing" that its purpose came into sharp relief. Being an expressive writer, I'd always known the personal benefit that came from written expression, but I'd never seen that feeling reinforced, formalized, and inserted into the academic canon with such legitimacy. Through Dr. Amy Hodges-Hamilton's course, I discovered that the effects of expressive writing reach far past the creative realm into the neuro-physiological realm, wherein mental trauma and PTSD are at play.

***

The traditional, practical definition of "transference" [as it exists in the clinical sense] cites the phenomenon in which a therapist serves as the object upon which his patient projects the details of his life and/or trauma. The therapist in turn acts as a vessel for "the return, the reincarnation, of some important figure out of his childhood or past, and [the patient] consequently transfers on to him feelings and reactions which undoubtedly apply to [the repressive] prototype" (Freud 189). In the traditional context, the physician may then project those details back to the patient as a method of clarification of unconscious drives and cognitive reorganization.

The previously cited definition [of transference] is a decidedly dated one, as much of traditional Freudian theory has been discredited in modern therapeutic practice. The core philosophy that comprises transference still persists, however, within modern discourse. Theorists have begun to cross-examine it in related fields, [theorists] like Wilma Bucci who discusses the link between cognitive development and healing as it relates to written practice. On the subject of transference she writes:

If the representation of a dreaded emotion schema emerges in the context of the new, interpersonal setting of the transference, material that has been previously unbearable may begin to take a new-and less unspeakable-meaning. As [the patient's] own aggression and his own victimization are both experienced in treatment, in relation to the analyst, [his] fear [...] takes a new meaning for him. (241)

The skeleton of [my memoir hinges upon] a call-and-response exchange between my mother's voice in her letters and my voice in my [own] written responses. This exchange creates a pseudo-conversation between the two of us through which I can reconcile my experience with the grief and trauma surrounding her death... When I began to notice the strings of familiarity forming between me as Reader and her as Writer, I likewise noticed that I inhabited two different perspectives--the first and third person perspective--regarding the subject matter. As such, the written, conversational exchanged between the two of us mirrors the transference process... I have termed this phenomenon of jumping between perspectives "revolving transference" due to the elliptical [motion] is assumes in the context of meaning-making. Through the continual writing, revising, reorganizing, and polishing of [the] memoir ... I am perpetually reaping the fragments of my own history that have been buried by loss, grief, and the simple passing of time.

***

End Note:

When writers, professional and novice alike, enter into the role of subject-as-memoirist, we enter into a state of revolving transference and begin to move fluidly through our own version of the aforementioned excavation process. The pinnacle of this process rests upon the reflective and revisional processes. The written word is a unique communicative medium as its permanency allows for the creation of multiple selves to whom we can always return at a later date for examination. This is particularly true where expressive, healing writing is concerned. Instead of our voices we have the pen, the keyboard, the slate and stylus. Instead of the the friend, the family member, the therapist we have the page upon which our projections land.

With our long-term dedication to the practice we eventually find ourselves with a thorough collection of snapshots. These snapshots will naturally resemble the mental fragments that we cannot bear to examine for more than a moment's time via raw thought processes. Put together on the page, however, they make up a whole picture through which meaning, in whatever form it takes, becomes clear.

Tilling the Connection between Writing and Psycho-Emotional Healing

The following is comprised of excerpts from the theoretical segment of my Master's thesis, Longsuffering. Some have been rearranged and/or revised for the sake of logic and chronology. The end note is an addendum written at a later date to reflect upon this discussion via a larger community-based scale.

My mother was diagnosed with Mesothelioma in July of 2010; she died eight months later. The day after she died, I was going through her possessions and found a book of letters that she'd addressed to my sister and me about us, our father, our family -- and of course my mother, herself. The letters span the decade from 1994 to 2004 and tell tales that I'd already known (but from an entirely different perspective), and tales that I never knew. They held deeply personal confessions, anecdotes rife with a sarcasm and humor so familiar that the woman who wrote them might as well have been in the same room speaking them into my ear.

I held onto the book for four years, knowing of its poignancy, but never quite realizing the why of it. It was not until I entered into a graduate English course at Belmont University called "Trauma and Writing" that its purpose came into sharp relief. Being an expressive writer, I'd always known the personal benefit that came from written expression, but I'd never seen that feeling reinforced, formalized, and inserted into the academic canon with such legitimacy. Through Dr. Amy Hodges-Hamilton's course, I discovered that the effects of expressive writing reach far past the creative realm into the neuro-physiological realm, wherein mental trauma and PTSD are at play.

***

The traditional, practical definition of "transference" [as it exists in the clinical sense] cites the phenomenon in which a therapist serves as the object upon which his patient projects the details of his life and/or trauma. The therapist in turn acts as a vessel for "the return, the reincarnation, of some important figure out of his childhood or past, and [the patient] consequently transfers on to him feelings and reactions which undoubtedly apply to [the repressive] prototype" (Freud 189). In the traditional context, the physician may then project those details back to the patient as a method of clarification of unconscious drives and cognitive reorganization.

The previously cited definition [of transference] is a decidedly dated one, as much of traditional Freudian theory has been discredited in modern therapeutic practice. The core philosophy that comprises transference still persists, however, within modern discourse. Theorists have begun to cross-examine it in related fields, [theorists] like Wilma Bucci who discusses the link between cognitive development and healing as it relates to written practice. On the subject of transference she writes:

If the representation of a dreaded emotion schema emerges in the context of the new, interpersonal setting of the transference, material that has been previously unbearable may begin to take a new-and less unspeakable-meaning. As [the patient's] own aggression and his own victimization are both experienced in treatment, in relation to the analyst, [his] fear [...] takes a new meaning for him. (241)

The skeleton of [my memoir hinges upon] a call-and-response exchange between my mother's voice in her letters and my voice in my [own] written responses. This exchange creates a pseudo-conversation between the two of us through which I can reconcile my experience with the grief and trauma surrounding her death... When I began to notice the strings of familiarity forming between me as Reader and her as Writer, I likewise noticed that I inhabited two different perspectives--the first and third person perspective--regarding the subject matter. As such, the written, conversational exchanged between the two of us mirrors the transference process... I have termed this phenomenon of jumping between perspectives "revolving transference" due to the elliptical [motion] is assumes in the context of meaning-making. Through the continual writing, revising, reorganizing, and polishing of [the] memoir ... I am perpetually reaping the fragments of my own history that have been buried by loss, grief, and the simple passing of time.

***

End Note:

When writers, professional and novice alike, enter into the role of subject-as-memoirist, we enter into a state of revolving transference and begin to move fluidly through our own version of the aforementioned excavation process. The pinnacle of this process rests upon the reflective and revisional processes. The written word is a unique communicative medium as its permanency allows for the creation of multiple selves to whom we can always return at a later date for examination. This is particularly true where expressive, healing writing is concerned. Instead of our voices we have the pen, the keyboard, the slate and stylus. Instead of the the friend, the family member, the therapist we have the page upon which our projections land.

With our long-term dedication to the practice we eventually find ourselves with a thorough collection of snapshots. These snapshots will naturally resemble the mental fragments that we cannot bear to examine for more than a moment's time via raw thought processes. Put together on the page, however, they make up a whole picture through which meaning, in whatever form it takes, becomes clear.