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Forming a story: The health benefits of narrative
Author(s) -
Pennebaker James W.,
Seagal Janel D.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
journal of clinical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.124
H-Index - 119
eISSN - 1097-4679
pISSN - 0021-9762
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1097-4679(199910)55:10<1243::aid-jclp6>3.0.co;2-n
Subject(s) - psychology , narrative , mental health , personality , cognition , function (biology) , class (philosophy) , developmental psychology , physical health , social psychology , cognitive psychology , psychotherapist , linguistics , psychiatry , philosophy , evolutionary biology , artificial intelligence , computer science , biology
Writing about important personal experiences in an emotional way for as little as 15 minutes over the course of three days brings about improvements in mental and physical health. This finding has been replicated across age, gender, culture, social class, and personality type. Using a text‐analysis computer program, it was discovered that those who benefit maximally from writing tend to use a high number of positive‐emotion words, a moderate amount of negative‐emotion words, and increase their use of cognitive words over the days of writing. These findings suggest that the formation of a narrative is critical and is an indicator of good mental and physical health. Ongoing studies suggest that writing serves the function of organizing complex emotional experiences. Implications for these findings for psychotherapy are briefly discussed. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Clin Psychol 55: 1243–1254, 1999.