Writing as Reflexive Technology: The Evolution of Expressive Writing
For my final project, I chose to explore the development of a type of writing technology and to develop a video to share my learning with you.
Below is the script and references that are used in the video. Enjoy!
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Writing as Reflexive Technology: The Evolution of Expressive Writing
The earliest records of writing were found in Mesopotamia, (present-day southern Iraq) in the late fourth millennium BC. “Early writing had three essential functions. It was used in state administration and bureaucracy, in trade and commerce, and in religion.” (Gnanadesikan, 2011, p. 2) The function of writing has evolved and expanded significantly since these earliest inceptions.
Writing evolved to engage and enlighten, offering a sort of magic that could be difficult to explain. Anne Frank, a young Jewish girl who kept a diary during the Nazi’s reign, said, “I can shake off everything as I write, my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.” (Frank, 1993, p. 177) Virginia Woolf, known for her severe episodes of depression, found comfort in writing, saying that, “Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works.” And Walter Ong, who studied orality and literacy (2002) wrote “….without writing, human consciousness cannot achieve its fuller potentials, cannot produce other beautiful and powerful creations” (p. 14.)
Writing is known as a reflexive technology, “allowing writers to see themselves in what they write…on papyrus, in codex, on the videoscreen…the reflexive character of each technology permits writers to find themselves in the texts they create and therefore to know themselves in a new way” (Bolter, 2001, p. 189).
Today’s writing technologies include electronic writing, and “…we write both to express, to discover, and to share who we are, and in a postmodern age our written identity is, like hypertext, dynamic, flexible, and contingent“ (Bolter, 2001, p. 190).
Beyond electronic and pen and paper writing, which some may see as an archaic form of reflexive technology, other reflexive technologies are used in our daily lives to help increase our self-awareness. Wearables such as the Fitbit bracelet that measures our physical activity or the Muse headset that measures our focus through brain waves are digital reflexive devices.
These devices help us to change ourselves by being more aware of ourselves, giving us quantifiable awareness on how we are doing. Like writing, these devices can serve as “mirrors” helping us to see ourselves more clearly.
However, for all of their digital progress, if we want to truly know ourselves and transform ourselves, these reflexive technologies pale in comparison to the reflexive value of writing. Deconstructionists such as Derrida have written of the value of writing as a reflexive tool, specifically referencing Sigmund Freud: “Freud speculates that…the perceiving self, is shaped by…writing.” (G. C. Spivak, in the preface to Of Grammatology by Derrida, 1976b, p. xli, cited in Bolter, 2001, p. 194).
Writing makes our “verbal thoughts visible” (Bolter, 2001, p. 193), helping us to understand ourselves, particularly our unconscious selves, more deeply. Not only does writing reveal our mind’s thoughts to ourselves; writing also creates our selves. It might even create our minds.
Bolter wrote, “If the technology of writing has been traditionally regarded as the creation of the human mind, possibly its greatest creation, we could also argue in the other direction: that the mind is the creation of writing.” (Bolter, 2001, p. 194). This is the essence of the value of writing for creating the self, one’s identity. It is the essence of fields such as cognitive psychology and narrative therapy.
While writers have known the healing powers of writing for centuries, its value as a therapeutic tool has only become clear in recent decades. One approach that has been applied in numerous studies is Pennebaker’s ‘Expressive Writing’ technique.
In 1983, James Pennebaker conducted a study that asked college students to write about a traumatic experience that they had kept as a secret and then compared it to their physical health (as indicated by physician visits). Pennebaker found a positive correlation between the writing and the students’ health (American Psychological Association, 2016). This study prompted several other studies around expressive writing and a new form of therapy was born. Pennebaker’s simple technique, which asks individuals to write about a traumatic event for 4 consecutive days, for 15 minutes per day, has been replicated and adapted around the world (American Psychological Association, 2016).
Studies “…indicate that expressive writing can result in fewer doctor visits, fewer depressive symptoms, enhanced immune system functioning, better grades…” (Slatcher & Pennebaker, 2006, p. 660) lowered anxiety, less rumination (Novotney, 2014) and the ability to change overall perception about a stressful event from a negative perception to a positive one. (Ullrich, 2012).
While much of the research using Pennebaker’s technique is focused on writing about very negative and traumatic experiences, there is also “…evidence that writing about more universally experienced negative events and emotions, such as test anxiety and failure” (DiMenichi et al., 2019, p. 8) can offer benefits for writers. In an examination of neural processing and expressive writing, it was demonstrated that “writing about test anxiety helps to decrease that anxiety and boosts performance” and expressive writing was identified as an “effective tool for educators to use to address negative emotions stemming from classroom experiences” (DiMenichi et al., 2019, p. 8).
Expressive writing not only shapes the self; it can also shape our relationships. To explore the effect of expressive writing on romantic relationships, Slatcher and Pennebaker asked individuals to write their “deepest thoughts and feelings about their relationship” for 20 minutes per day, 2 days in a row. Their results found that “the relatively simple act of writing about their romantic relationship changed the way in which participants communicated with their partners in IM conversations” (Slatcher & Pennebaker, 2006, p. 662)
Speaking of applications such as instant messaging, the relative simplicity and effectiveness of the Pennebaker technique has led to its adoption in e-mail and web-based applications, with evidence suggesting that e-mail-based treatments are also effective in improving health outcomes (Sheese, Brown & Graziano, 2004). While studies have applied Pennebaker’s technique using technologies such as text and email, there has been no deliberate study of differences in effectiveness between handwritten expressive writing and typed expressive writing. Perhaps there aren’t any significant differences, given that studies of the Pennebaker technique continue to find similar psychological and physical health benefits, regardless of whether the writing was handwritten or typed.
Walter Ong, who explored the transition from orality to literacy, appreciated “…that various writing technologies permit the writer or reader to slow the insistent pace of spoken language, to control the rate at which he must produce or receive words.” (Bolter, 2001, p. 192). Perhaps it is this slowing of pace, this opportunity for reflection, that creates the value of writing, as it appears that the method of writing matters very little. What does matter is the story itself, the words that spill from the pen onto the page or are stamped onto a screen from the clickety-clack of a keyboard. In the same vein, Pujolà (2010) notes that “digital environments such as blogs, infographics or e-portfolios allow for different possibilities in terms of facilitating metacognitive reflections beyond the written word” (Pujolà, 2010, cited in Birello & Pujolà, 2020, p. 535). Blogging in particular has been shown to provide “…all of the same opportunities as journaling, including the introspection of values and actions, and the reflection of life circumstances” (Hibsch & Mason, 2020, p.3).
Continuing with the theme of technology, Pennebaker worked with Martha Francis to develop the Linguistic Inquiry Word Count text-analysis software. This software has been used to demonstrate the value of career writing for the development of career identity (Lengelle et al., 2014) and how our language use is strongly connected with our personality traits (Hirsch & Peterson, 2009, p. 524). As a result of Pennebaker’s efforts, “…people across multiple disciplines are discovering that it is possible to analyze people’s psychological states through the analysis of their words” (American Psychological Association, 2016, p. 682.)
Writing has evolved as a tool for knowing, creating, reshaping, healing and transforming the self. Expressive writing, and the work that it has inspired, has contributed, and will continue to contribute, to positive psychological and physical health outcomes in the future. We still have much to learn as we do not fully understand all of the underlying mechanisms that make writing, and especially expressive writing, such a powerful tool for personal transformation. As Pennebaker himself notes, “it continues to vex many scientists, and that’s its beauty” (American Psychological Association, 2016, p. 682.)
References
American Psychological Association. Award for distinguished contributions to the applications of psychology: James W. Pennebaker. (2016). The American Psychologist, 71(8), 681-683. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000071
Birello, M., & Pujola Font, J. T. (2020). The affordances of images in digital reflective writing: An analysis of preservice teachers’ blog posts. Reflective Practice, 21(4), 534-551. https://doi.org/10.1080/14623943.2020.1781609
Bolter, J. D. (2001). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (2nd ed.). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781410600110
DiMenichi, B. C., Ceceli, A. O., Bhanji, J. P., & Tricomi, E. (2019). Effects of expressive writing on neural processing during learning. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 13, 389-389. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2019.00389
Frank, A. (1993). The Diary of a Young Girl. Mass Market Paperback. Pg. 177.
Gnanadesikan, A. E. (2011).“The First IT Revolution.” In The writing revolution: Cuneiform to the internet. (Vol. 25). John Wiley & Sons (pp. 1-10).
Hibsch, A. N., & Mason, S. E. (2020). The new age of creative expression: The effect of blogging on emotional well-being. Journal of Creativity in Mental Health, 1-11. doi:10.1080/15401383.2020.1820925
Hirsh, J. B., & Peterson, J. B. (2009). Personality and language use in self-narratives. Journal of Research in Personality, 43(3), 524-527. doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2009.01.006
Lengelle, R., & Meijers, F. (2014). Narrative identity: Writing the self in career learning. British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, 42(1), 52-72. doi:10.1080/03069885.2013.816837
Novotney, A. (2014, June). Blogging for mental health. Retrieved April 10, 2021, from https://www.apa.org/monitor/2014/06/blogging
Sheese, B. E., Brown, E. L., & Graziano, W. G. (2004). Emotional expression in cyberspace: Searching for moderators of the Pennebaker disclosure effect via E-mail. Health Psychology, 23(5), 457-464. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-6133.23.5.457
Slatcher, R. B., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2006). How do I love thee? let me count the words: The social effects of expressive writing. Psychological Science, 17(8), 660-664. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01762.x
Ong, W. J., Taylor & Francis eBooks – CRKN, & CRKN MiL Collection. (2002). Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. Routledge.
Ullrich, P. M., & Lutgendorf, S. K. (2002). Journaling about stressful events: Effects of cognitive processing and emotional expression. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 24(3), 244-250. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15324796ABM2403_10
Woolf, Virginia. Quotes. Unknown.
