In a recent interview, Tony Blair said he regretted that he'd never had the discipline to keep a diary. He was talking, one assumes, about the kind of brief daily journal that could have helped him write his memoirs (after it had been returned by Scotland Yard, of course). This is as opposed to the kind of diary celebrated in such self-help books as Journaling From The Heart, Embrace Your Life Through Creative Journaling and Inner Journeying Through Art-Journaling - or in the magazine Personal Journaling which is, intolerably, a journal about journaling. It's hard to imagine any politician keeping this kind of diary, which calls for introspection and self-questioning. At the risk of blinding you with my unrivalled access to Blair's inner circle, you can take it from me that No 10 doesn't subscribe to Personal Journaling magazine.
And rightly so. You surely don't have to be some stiff-upper-lipped British throwback to find the cult of journaling a bit wallowingly self-absorbed. Even so, I was surprised to find agreement from Professor Jamie Pennebaker, the world's leading scientific authority on the emotional benefits of writing things down. "Oh, yes, you can definitely wallow," said Pennebaker, an experimental psychologist at the University of Texas. "I've noticed how people who journal a lot can seem to tell the same story, over and over again."
What's startling, though, are the proven mood-enhancing powers of writing when it's done in a more focused way. Pennebaker's research shows that when people who've experienced trauma are asked to write about it - for 15 minutes a day for four days, no more - they show rapid improvements in wellbeing compared with those who write about something else. In one extraordinary experiment, by John Weinman at King's College London, small, identical skin wounds were inflicted on patients, some of whom were then asked to spend a few minutes, for a few days, writing about stressful events. The wounds were monitored with ultrasound, and the skin damage healed faster among those who wrote about their feelings.
Strange things happen when people write in this way. Over several days, their language shifts from being emotional to being more thoughtful; from being dominated by "I" and "me" to "we" and "us". So it seems writing works not only as catharsis but in a practical way, too, helping us objectify problems, step out of self-absorption, and look to solutions. It isn't a case of "a problem shared is a problem halved", either: nobody else need ever see what you write.
"Years ago, my wife and I went through a difficult patch in our marriage," Pennebaker recalled. "We were in the midst of all sorts of ugly tension, and I just sat down and started writing. Even within the first day, it was all starting to come together. I threw away what I wrote, because I didn't want my wife to see it." They're still married.
oliver.burkeman@ theguardian.com
