Search

This paper explores the role of literacy in the lives of women who are recovering from substance abuse. It discusses the work and products of a one-year literacy workshop in which participants were immersed in reading, writing and sharing of different writings and works of arts. The work with the women converged around their poetry, prose and free writing during their literacy workshop and journaling. Conversations about their writing revealed four themes: (1) finding one’s voice, (2) shifting self-perceptions, (3) writing as an outlet for expression and for sharing traumatic events, and (4) talking about addiction. The overarching concept of these four themes is literacy as a healing tool. This paper discusses the role of writing as a tool for healing from traumatic events and dealing with addiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows how reading and writing processes contribute to therapist supervision as a means of working through impasse situations and facilitating the development of the therapeutic self. Texts read and written during supervision will mediate resistance, blocked narratives and containment or attention issues, as well as difficulties in change and processing developments during therapy. Texts will serve as a platform to contain the unconscious and conscious realms and shall contain the professional intrapersonal processing of the supervisee, as well as therapist-patient transference and countertransference relations and supervision relations. For this purpose, three variations of supervision shall be presented, demonstrating the transformative power of reading and writing processes for supervision in impasse situations: (1) reading and writing the therapeutic hour's summaries as a means to gain a re-observation; (2) the text's contribution in removing the patient's identity barriers; (3) the text as a release container to expose the iceberg. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper includes research into the pervasiveness and dangerousness of intimate partner violence and the ways that poetry therapy can be used to help victims gain perspective on their situation. According to the World Health Organization, over 30 percent of women worldwide have experienced violence at the hands of a partner. The author's personal experience with poetry therapy in leaving an abusive relationship of 13 years is used as an example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trauma needs containment and recognition in order to be handled, and this project enabled the soldier to do both through the use of writing and poetry. This paper is based on the qualitative findings of an 18-month long poetry therapy group conducted in a veteran's center, and follows the progress of the veterans as they learned to use writing and poetry to focus on the present and reconnect to a broad spectrum of emotions they had been trained to suppress. The paper describes the theory behind the exercises and their impact on the veterans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]