"Writing as healing and the Rhetorical Tradition"

Just like the title suggests, T.R. Johnson's essay talks about the progression and tradition of writing as a form of healing. He begins with the ancient Greeks and how writing was associated with healing because trauma was also part of the sickness. Johnson says "The Greeks of this era viewed all disease--not just what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder--as open to the curative powers of language" (90).

Johnson goes on to say that many of this accepted ideas and practices were soon lost due to Plato's idea that writing was not the answer people needed. Johnson instead brings up the opposition to Plato, saying that writing is a way to find one's true self as well as help to heal one's own wounds. To argue his point, Johnson uses the work of Jerome Bruner and Carl Rogers to show that writing is a way to find out more about yourself.

Both Bruner and Rogers directed their work towards some kind of self-actualization. Bruner pushed more towards a researched based form of self-discovery for a writer, which was instead interpreted as simply going against social contexts. Johnson includes a quote by James Berlin, who says "Bruner was not interested in relating knowledge to society...for Bruner students must learn for themselves" (97). Rogers similarly looks at the "self-as-process". Rogers ideas were thought of as escapism and self-indulgence, but Johnson argues that we can learn a lot from taking Rogers's ideas and bringing them into the classroom.

What I found really interesting about this reading was the stuff about the expressivist rhetoric and how there are so many ways to derive meaning from different works. Johnson argues that these ideas offer up an alternative to Plato's ideas and the more rigid forms of thought that would hamper writers like Tim O'Brien. I think it is interesting that writing has always been a way of healing but that certain ideas and ideologies have gotten in the way to keep it from being completely accepted and main stream. It is interesting because with almost every piece we read we learn of a new obstacle in the way of writing and healing, almost like writing in order to heal is just as shameful as the trauma itself.