Writing For Traumatic Therapy

In the history of psychology, psychologists have always attached great importance to the influence of the emotional expression upon individual health. The purpose of emotional expression can be achieved through both oral and written forms. Many writers expressed their traumatic feelings in their literal works so as to be self-healed, wheras writing is widely applied as a supplementary skill in the traditional psytherapy. Nevertheless, it is in the recent twenty years that the experimental study on the effect of writing has been conducted.The experimental study mode of writing or Expressive writing, initiated by Pennebaker, refers to the writing of personal emotions and thoughts on a certain theme within a certain amount of time. A great deal of research on expressive writing has proven the contribution of writing traumatic experience to the physical and mental health. However, there is little research on traumatic therapy through the expressive writing. Furthermore, ambiguity still remains in the effect and mechanism of the expressive writing on the posttraumatic stress responses. A relevant research on the relations between the expressive writing and the posttraumatic stress responses can not only promote the theoretical study on the expressive writing, but provide theoretical basis as well as guidance for practice to the traumatic therapy through writing.On the basis of relevant literature review, this dissertation adopted the experimental study to probe into the effect and mechanism of the expressive writing upon the posttraumatic stress responses, examine the medium effect of, and demonstrate the application of the expressive writing in the traumatic therapy through individual cases.To begin with, the dissertation discusses the influence of the expressive writing upon the posttraumatic stress responses based on two experiments. The research on the first experiment showed that traumatic experience writing could decrease individuals' posttraumatic stress symptom and depression, in which there is no gender difference. The research on the second experiment indicated that the same effect on the decrease of individual's posttraumatic stress responses existed in the positive and traumatic experience writing, while important experience writing, including both positive and negative ones, exerted a greater influence upon the decrease of individual's posttraumatic stress responses than positive as well as traumatic experience writing; positive experience writing enjoyed a better effect than the traumatic and important experience writing on the decrease of individual depression and anxiety symptom. Then, this dissertation deals with the mechanism of the expressive writing upon posttraumatic stress responses. The research result has shown that the emotional expression in writing is the essential condition in affecting posttraumatic stress responses, while the cognitive process based on the emotional expression.Thirdly, this dissertation focuses on the medium effect of the personality upon the expressive writing. Relevant analysis and regression analysis have revealed that alexythimia, extroversion, neuroticism is significantly negative correlated to the effect of the expressive writing in which difficulty in expression feeling and neuroticism are the major indexes.Finally, this dissertation made an attempt in the application of the effect of the expressive writing upon the traumatic therapy on the basis of individual case study. The results indicated that the expressive writing could be applied in the traumatic therapy, but the actual effect has something to do with people's traumatic symptom and traumatic disclosure before writing, and essay characteristics.