Writing Cures: An Introductory Handbook of Writing in Counselling and Therapy edited by Gillie Bolton, Stephanie Howlett, Colin Lago and Jeannie K. Wright. Published by  Brunner/Routledge, Hove and New York, 2004; £16.99 paperback.

The beneficial effect of disclosing our private thoughts and feelings, either to a confidant, priest, counsellor or therapist, has been acknowledged for centuries. Confession, as we all know, is good for the soul. More intriguing

is the fact that putting such thoughts into writing can be of equal benefit. Writers have long been aware that getting our persecutory ruminations out of our heads and down on to the page actually reduces their power over us. I have no doubt that keeping a private journal most of my adult life has helped me stay more sane and healthy than I might otherwise have been. So I find it puzzling that it has taken so long for analytical psychotherapy, so fertile in its production of analytic literature, to recognize writing as a valuable therapeutic agent in its own right?

This situation could begin to change with the publication of Writing Cures. To someone like myself, trained in the hothouse of analytical psychotherapy, the range of therapeutic writing techniques employed by the contributors to this handbook came like a breath of fresh air. They include the practice of narrative writing, described by Jane Speedy in Chapter 3 as a way of making sense of our personal lives in the context of our family history and social environment - and observing how it changes with emotional development. Another method is the use of letter writing in all its permutations: mainly letters to significant others, letters which will never be sent but manage to say what has never been said; or letters to oneself (perhaps the child one used to be, or the self one could possibly become?) or even letters to - and from - malfunctioning organs in one's own body. This approach is fascinatingly described in Chapter 8 by Stephanie Howlett in her work with patients suffering from chronic psychosomatic disorders, most of whom are seriously out of touch with their emotions and notoriously difficult to reach. Howlett, in quoting Joyce McDougall on ‘the discovery that certain peo