Workbook Questions - Writing of Torture, Trauma Experience

📖 The Scoop

Workbook Questions: Writing of Torture, Trauma Experience is designed to facilitate survivors of trauma and torture in writing of traumatic experiences, even if complex or untold, by using clinically planned questions to create a space where the survivor's sense of self and identity can remain securely intact.This workbook and its questions were developed by the clinician, academic and researcher Margaret Bennett, who, for a decade, was the Director of STARTTS (NSW Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors), and by the acclaimed author Jennifer Maiden, who was their Writer in Residence, and has conducted over a thousand other literary workshops dealing with traumatic material. This book includes a far-ranging, informal discussion between Bennett and Maiden on the questions' genesis and the theory and clinical experience underpinning them. This workbook is designed for use by groups or by someone working on their own. Whilst the genesis of the Torture and Incarceration Questions as such was in a therapeutic context, it is possible to use the questions in this workbook to write the reader's own story and experiences.On the level of artistic expression, Maiden has observed that answering the questions in this workbook enhances writing skills, as the focus of the questions on visual impression, taste, smell, physical closeness and sentiment is also a literary technique which can be utilised to engage a reader.Maiden has noted the similarity between a professional firefighter extinguishing flames by focusing initially on the fire's outskirts, and the way in which this workbook's questions address traumatic experiences, by asking first about experiences on a trauma's outskirts - past emotions, events and sensations - but ultimately asking about survivors' current situation, feelings and insight into what would help them thrive.

Genre: Social Science / General (fancy, right?)