Writing Works: A Resource Handbook for Therapeutic Writing Workshops and Activities

Front Cover
Victoria Field, Gillie Bolton, Kate Thompson
Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2006 M08 15 - 256 pages

The use of creative writing as a route to personal development is a powerful therapeutic tool - a fact that is recognized in the growing numbers of workshops and writing groups within professional contexts, including clinical, health and criminal justice settings.

Writing Works is a guide for writers or therapists working with groups or individuals and is full of practical advice on everything from the equipment needed to run a session to ideas for themes, all backed up by the theory that underpins the methods explained. Experienced practitioners in the field contribute detailed illuminating accounts of organizing writing workshops for a wide range of different clients, together with examples of their outcomes.

This book will be an invaluable start-up reference for arts therapists and professionals working across the health, social care and caring professions, and one that will be referred to again and again.

 

Contents

Introduction
13
Writing from Without
33
Writing from Within
139
APPENDIX 1 MAP OF THE BOOK
236
APPENDIX 2 CLASSIC EXERCISES
239
APPENDIX 3 USEFUL RESOURCES
240
REFERENCES
242
CONTRIBUTORS
245
SUBJECT INDEX
252
AUTHOR INDEX
255
Copyright

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Popular passages

Page 9 - What's writing really about? It's trying to take fuller possession of the reality of your life - to attack it and attack it and get it under control'.

References to this book

About the author (2006)

Gillie Bolton has worked in reflective and therapeutic writing for personal and professional development for twenty-five years, and has written and edited five books, one of which is now in its third edition. A grandmother of three, she lives in Bloomsbury, London, and Hope Valley, Derbyshire.

Kate Thompson is a BACP senior accredited counsellor and supervisor and a journal therapist. After gaining a degree in English Literature from Cambridge University and therapeutic training, she developed a method of combining the two. She is a faculty member of the Center for Journal Therapy and Institute for Therapeutic Writing and lives in Colorado, USA.

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