Alison Croggon wrote: It ignores the
self-gratifying annihilation of self that writing offers in its
aesthetic considerations, say. Hmmm.
Hmmm is right, "self-gratifying annihilation of self?" haha
I read a bunch of these too, The Secret Life of Pronouns,
Word Use in the Poetry of Suicidal and Nonsuicidal Poets,
Lying Words, and the one you mention about the repression
of trauma damaging the immune system, and found it interesting
if not entirely persuasive.
I had to wonder why in "The Secret Life of Pronouns," the most
significant measure of increasing health is a change of style
in pronoun usage, and in "Lying Words," a primary indicator
of truthfulness is the use of the first person pronoun, whereas
the use of the first person pronoun is hypothesized as
part of the disengagement of the suicidal poet.
I also noticed that in the conclusions for this paper on
the suicidal and nonsuicidal poet, nothing was said
about the higher means of terms of "positive emotions" among
the suicidal poets, which are 3.3 early, 3.1 middle, and 3.9
later. Whereas the control, and nonsuicidal group of poets,
was 2.3 early, 2.9 in middle, 2.5 late. Which indicates
that suicidal poets have a higher rate of terms of "positive
emotion (happy, love) and may just get happier and happier. Whereas
the control group seems to decline somewhat. Though it was
noted that the suicidal poets had a higher usage of sexual words
throughout their writing. Which in a weird sort of way might
suggest that due to their increased use of the first person,
the suicidal poets are not liars (since in "Lying Words"
"liars used first-person pronouns at a lower rate than
truth-tellers), that they express more positive emotion,
happiness and love, and that this increases as they go,
more terms of "communication (talk, share)" and more sexual
words throughout their writing lives. Well, is it any wonder
the poor fools do themselves in?
Well, seriously, this paper "hypothesized that there would be
an increase in hopelessness words and in references to the
self and a decrease in positive emotion words and references
to communications with others in the later periods of the poets'
careers." In the hopelessness words, there was a continuing
decrease from 2.2 to 1.8 to 1.7. The positive emotion words
increased as I noted above. The references to the self remained
the same as 4.0 in the early and later work, with a dip in
the middle. And only the references to communications with
others declined, from 1.2 to 1.0. Three out of four of
the elements of the hypothesis were contradicted by the study's
own data. Also the conclusions at one point seem simply in
error, "Additionally, the use of the first-person plural, which
might indicate an awareness of and an integration in social
and personal relationships, was lower in the suicide group's
poetry than it was in that of the nonsuicide group." But
Table 1 shows for the use "We (us, our) for the suicide
group .73, 1.3, and .85, and for the control group, .69,
.40, and 1.1. It's only lower in later usage, and if that
is significant, I wonder what to make of that .40 among
the "socially integrated" nonsuicidal group.
When the authors begin the conclusion "the results indicate
that certain features may be associated with suicide,"
_may_ seems to be the operative word here. Particularly
for a study that failed to prove three out of four
of the elements of its hypothesis.
Best,
Rebecca
Rebecca Seiferle
www.thedrunkenboat.com
-------Original Message-------
From: Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 08/17/03 10:19 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Poetry & Psych
>
> At 2:56 PM -0500 16/8/03, tom bell wrote:>here's an url for a pdf
version
>http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/faculty/Pennebaker/Reprints/Suicidal
>Poets.PDF
>
>but you'll probably need to cut and paste it in your browser?
The end of the url might have fallen off - I had to reinstate an "htm"
Well, I've downloaded a few of the essays, and I am really not at all
sure that this kind of investigation really pertains to imaginative
writing. I have long known that repressing trauma rather than
expressing it leads to depressing the immune system, and that also
the entering of imaginative states may be as traumatic as the
original episodes, and may exacerbate mental problems rather than
solve them (who is it in the Bible who say that wisdom only leads to
sadness?) I think most writers are very familiar with their own
neuroses whether they choose to express them directly or not. &c.
And he just seems to be saying things like, well, poets who write
about sad stuff are more likely to kill themselves... Also I don't
know how you can do a linguistic analysis of Mandelstam and Pasternak
in English, but there is no comment on studying the work in its
original Russian. I also downloaded his essay on truth-tellers and
liars and their linguistic use, and wondered whether he would say
fiction writers were truth tellers or liars. Since of course good
fiction writers are both.
I actually have very little doubt that imaginative writing is a
adaptive survival mechanism. But there is a real problem in viewing
it through therapeutic glasses. Dr Pennebaker seems to be coming
from the other end - that it helps people to write things down or
otherwise express what troubles them - which is fine, but I think is
of little use in analysing the phenomenon of writing and runs the
risk of boxing it in issues of mental health. It ignores the
self-gratifying annihilation of self that writing offers in its
aesthetic considerations, say. Hmmm.
A much more urgent and interesting relationship between trauma and
language is outlined in Elizabeth Scarry's The Body in Pain - The
Making and Unmaking of the World.
Best
A
--
Alison Croggon
Blog
http://alisoncroggon.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead
http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
Home page
http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
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