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Being present in language: A comparison of therapy and journal structures with implications for the teaching of writing
Abstract
This theoretical study explores connections between therapy and personal journals--both structures that facilitate personal growth through the integration of thought and feeling. Through therapy theory and practice, as described by D. W. Winnicott, Carl Jung, Carl Rogers, Robert Kegan, Karen Horney, Mary Watkins, and others, and through reference to my own journals and journaling experience, it describes three characteristics of journals and therapy essential to such growth: holding, presentness, and reflective language. Further, it suggests how these three concepts pertain to the teaching of writing and interrogates the concept of integration in a consideration of classroom structure. Holding, based on the originary relationship of mother and infant described by D. W. Winnicott, characterizes a nurturing context that supports the therapy client or journal writer in a consistent, responsive, and accepting way. In mirroring the individual, this context allows him or her to trust that their feeling self is accepted and that they can express that self in language. Holding is, thus, foundational to all later development. Presentness, or openness to feeling in the present moment, allows the therapy client or journal writer, who is already engaged in a writing process of story telling, re-telling, revising, and naming, to further connect or engage with an "other," be it with other selves or parts of the self or with the world outside the self. Such feeling may occur in intense moments of felt connection or in a more ongoing way through the verbal expression of feeling statements. In either case, present feeling stimulates and energizes the drive for new meaning necessitated by changing contexts. Thus, feeling contributes to the creation of new form that renders meaning. Without language to access that feeling, however, experience remains unconscious. Reflective language, in one's "own words," that takes account of feeling and turns back upon the self engaged in a primary creative process like writing to reflect on that self and the engagement is inherently integrative and the means to deep learning and greater self knowledge.
Subject Area
Educational theory|Language arts
Recommended Citation
Whitney, Anne Rothman, "Being present in language: A comparison of therapy and journal structures with implications for the teaching of writing" (1994). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9510986.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9510986