Writing as Therapy

I picked up this idea from reading David Lodge's Therapy. More recently I ran across in The Guardian Deborah Levy: I used writing as therapy to help me talk again after jailing of my father with perhaps a more concrete example:

The breakthrough came when a school teacher encouraged her to write down her thoughts: “So I had a go and I discovered my thoughts were quite loud.”

The therapeutic exercise, resulting in an essay called A Record of Things I Don’t Know, which covered her father’s plight, sparked a love of creative writing that has dominated her life. “Then I invented a cat that had yellow eyes, very lonely, and could fly and do summersaults, and of course the cat was myself and I began to understand at quite a young age that you could find an avatar to be you and give it your thoughts, problems and opinions, so really that was the beginning.”

I think my PO thinks my writing is some sly variation on my criminality. When I told him about my writing he asked if I was writing erotica. (Be careful of questions, what you ask may be telling about one's own mindset.) Anyone reading this blog and/or my fiction would know erotica is not what I write. No, if not obviously in substance there is in the mere creation a form of therapy in my writing.

I suggest trying out the process for yourself.

sch

1/22/22