In this Book
- Signifying Pain: Constructing and Healing the Self through Writing
- Book
- 2003
- Published by: State University of New York Press
- Series: SUNY series in Psychoanalysis and Culture
summary
A deeply personal yet universal work, Signifying Pain applies the principles of therapeutic writing to such painful life experiences as mental illness, suicide, racism, domestic abuse, and even genocide. Probing deep into the bedrock of literary imagination, Judith Harris traces the odyssey of a diverse group of writers—John Keats, Derek Walcott, Jane Kenyon, Michael S. Harper, Robert Lowell, and Ai, as well as student writers—who have used their writing to work through and past such personal traumas. Drawing on her own experience as a poet and teacher, Harris shows how the process can be long and arduous, but that when exercised within the spirit of one’s own personal compassion, the results can be limitless. Signifying Pain will be of interest not only to teachers of creative and therapeutic writing, but also to those with a critical interest in autobiographical or confessional writing more generally.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- Acknowledgments
- p. ix
- Introduction
- pp. 1-16
- Part I Speaking Pain: Women, Psychoanalysis, and Writing
- Part II Soul-making: Conflict and the Construction of Identity
- Part III Healing Pain: Acts of Therapeutic Writing
- Chapter 13 Asylum: A Personal Essay
- pp. 239-247
- Bibliography
- pp. 281-289
Additional Information
ISBN
9780791487068
DOI
MARC Record
OCLC
56406335
Pages
320
Launched on MUSE
2012-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No