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Expressive writing is a form of therapy in which individuals write about their thoughts and feelings related to a personally stressful or traumatic life experience. Expressive writing is sometimes referred to as written disclosure, because writers are instructed to disclose personal information, thoughts, and feelings. Unlike communicative forms of writing, expressive writing is personal, free flowing, and informal, often without concern for style, spelling, punctuation, or grammar.
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Expressive writing resembles journaling, which had its heyday the 1970s following the publication of Ira Progoff’s book, At a Journal Workshop. In the late 1980s, researchers James Pennebaker and Sandra Klihr Beall conducted one of the earliest controlled scientific investigations into the therapeutic effects of expressive writing. In that study, college students in an expressive writing intervention condition wrote for 15 min on 4 consecutive days...
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References and Further Reading
Frattaroli, J. (2006). Experimental disclosure and its moderators: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 132, 823–865.
Frisina, P. G., Borod, J., & Lepore, S. J. (2004). A meta-analysis of the effects of written emotional disclosure on health outcomes of clinical populations. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 192, 629–634.
Lepore, S. J., & Smyth, J. (Eds.). (2002). The writing cure: How expressive writing influences health and well-being. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Nyklicek, I., Temoshok, L., & Vingerhoets, A. (Eds.). (2004). Emotional expression and health: Advances in theory, assessment and clinical applications. New York: Taylor & Francis.
Pennebaker, J. W. (Ed.). (2002). Emotion, disclosure, & health. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Sloan, D. M., & Marx, B. P. (2004). Taking pen to hand: Evaluating theories underlying the written disclosure paradigm. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 11, 121–137.
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Lepore, S.J., Kliewer, W. (2019). Expressive Writing and Health. In: Gellman, M.D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Behavioral Medicine. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6439-6_1225-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6439-6_1225-2
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