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Emotional processing in vocal and written expression of feelings about traumatic experiences
Author(s) -
Murray Edward J.,
Segal Daniel L.
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
journal of traumatic stress
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.259
H-Index - 134
eISSN - 1573-6598
pISSN - 0894-9867
DOI - 10.1002/jts.2490070305
Subject(s) - feeling , psychology , expression (computer science) , mood , emotional expression , interpersonal communication , session (web analytics) , psychotherapist , clinical psychology , developmental psychology , social psychology , world wide web , computer science , programming language
The purpose of this study was to compare vocal and written expression of feeling about interpersonal traumatic and trivial events in 20‐min sessions over a 4‐day period. Similar emotional processing was produced by vocal and written expression of feeling about traumatic events. The painfulness of the topic decreased steadily over the 4 days. At the end, both groups felt better about their topics and themselves and also reported positive cognitive changes. A content analysis of the sessions suggested greater overt expression of emotion and related changes in the vocal condition. Finally, there was an upsurge in negative emotion after each session of either vocal or written expression. These results suggest that previous findings that psychotherapy ameliorated this negative mood upsurge could not be attributed to the vocal character of psychotherapy.