The Implications of Writing-and-Healing Theory
for the Teaching of Basic Writing

by Molly Hurley Moran University of Georgia

I first became interested in the phenomenon of healing-through-writing a couple of years ago because of my own recent experience with it: writing a book about my sister’s murder had enabled me to find coherence in the tragedy and to re-build my shattered emotional world. Intrigued, I began to research the phenomenon, and discovered that there was an exciting new interdisciplinary movement devoted to it.

The movement was launched by a psychology professor, James Pennebaker, who conducted a series of experiments on college students in the late 1980s that revealed that “disclosure writing”—expressing in writing one’s deepest thoughts and feelings about a painful or shameful experience—can effect improved emotional and even physical health as well as better academic performance. His 1990 book Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions spawned further experiments by psychologists, as well as by neuroscientists curious about the changes that occur in the brain during disclosure writing. Around this same time, certain composition and literature professors also became interested in the phenomenon and began to analyze the way narrative, imagery, and metaphor shape reality and hence give the writer a sense of control and coherence.

The research got me excited about the implications writing and healing theory held for the basic writing classroom. As a teacher in this field, I had long noticed that many of my students seem inordinately saddled with emotional issues—not just the run-of-the-mill problems of divorced parents, eating disorders, and so on but the additional burden of low self-esteem due to being labeled LD or being placed in remedial courses. It occurred to me that if I had my students write about these issues, they might gain greater control over their lives and hence become more confident and perform better academically. But I was worried that in adopting this approach I might be criticized for trying to play psychologist rather than teaching writing. I was also aware that personal writing has largely been out of favor in the composition classroom since the 1970s. Nevertheless, I decided to embark on a writing-and-healing approach in my basic writing class, encouraged by my own empowering experience of therapeutic writing and by some of the essays in the 2000 NCTE volume Writing and Healing: Toward an Informed Practice that argue that writing about personally meaningful or emotional topics causes students to shape their language more carefully and has a trickle-down effect such that they become better writers in general. Accordingly, over the summer of 2003, I re-vamped my basic writing course (UNIV 1115 at the University of Georgia). Here is an overview of the main changes I made:

Course Goals:

Old: To prepare students for English 1101 and for the kinds of writing they will do in their college courses.

New: To help students learn to enjoy writing and to understand its role in their emotional, intellectual, and academic development.

Types of Essays Assigned:

Old: Impersonal analysis and argument (although occasionally I would assign a personal narrative for the first essay), based on topics in essays we read in the course reader.

New: First two essays are purely personal (personal narrative and reflection on a personal concern); subsequent essays are analysis and argument, but topics grow out of personal reflections in their journals.

Course Format:

Old: Read essays in reader for homework, discuss in class, formulate a thesis regarding topic discussed, and write an essay on it, moving through the stages of the writing process and turning in the final draft for a grade.

New: 15 minutes minimum of private writing per night and 10 minutes at the beginning of each class: sometimes a personal response to homework readings, other times a rumination on personal issues or concerns. Essay topics are developed out of the private writing. Students move through the stages of the writing process and turn in final draft, which is returned with comments but no grade. During last two weeks of semester, they revise three of their essays for grades, and submit one to the class magazine.

The heart of my new approach is the emphasis on private writing and the encouragement— but not requirement—to explore painful issues in it. Students usually initially resist the private writing, but once they realize I am not going to read it (they just flash their entries before my eyes periodically so that I can give them a homework check), most of them really get into it. In the end-of-term anonymous questionnaires, many state that they find the private writing valuable, in that it gives them insights into personal problems and also helps them to come up with essay topics they can more fully engage with. As for the hoped-for improvement in writing resulting from this approach, I do see some: the essays’ content on the whole is richer, the language fresher, and the editing more careful. I attribute this improvement to the fact that students put more thought, time, and effort into writing that they are personally vested in; perhaps some of the improvement also stems from a more integrated sense of self achieved through the private writing (but I do not have the psychological tools to measure this change).

A fuller description of my new approach and my findings can be found in my Fall 2004 JBW article “Toward a Writing and Healing Approach in the Basic Writing Classroom: One Professor’s Personal Odyssey.”

Here are some questions I have for the group, to get our discussion started. Feel free to raise additional questions.

What are the feelings in your department about assigning personal writing in the basic writing course?

• What has been your own experience with assigning personal writing? Why do you or why do you not assign it? Do you agree with critics that it encourages sloppy, self-indulgent writing (David Bartholomae’s criticism) or with proponents (such as Peter Elbow) that it gives students confidence in their own ideas and hence better integrates them into the academy?
• Do you find, as I have found, that essays are richer in content and contain fresher language and fewer editing errors when students are allowed to write about personally meaningful topics? I have noticed in particular that there is less inflated, less abstract writing. (My hunch is that that kind of writing is a sign that students are unsure of what they have to say and are straining to make themselves sound more “academic.”)
• Do you have any techniques for helping students process their personal ruminations into public or academic essays? One of my main methods is to show them published essays that present a thesis of public concern that has grown out of the author’s personal experience (such as Barbara Ascher’s “On Compassion” and Nancy Mairs’s “Disability”). I would be interested in hearing about exercises that can help students transform concerns from personal journal writing into public or academic discourse.

What are the potential dangers of assigning personal writing? What safeguards do you use to avoid these dangers? (A good article that addresses this topic is Dan Morgan’s “Ethical Issues Raised by Students’ Personal Writing,” College English 60 [1998]: 318-25.) How or where do you draw the line between writing teacher and counselor?

Suggested Readings Related to Writing & Healing and the Psychology of the Writing Process
Suggested Readings Supporting Use of Personal Writing in Composition and Basic Writing Courses

Teaching Basic Writing Home Page

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