Healing Through The Written Word Analysis

The practice of writing to heal is a process that can be used universally through personal discovery, guidance, and acceptance. This practice is presented in an article, “Healing through the Written Word,” by Karen Cangialosi published in ‘The Permanente Journal’ which is an up-to-date medical journal read worldwide by doctors. Cangialosi herself is a psychotherapist employed at Kaiser Permanente’s Positive Choice Wellness Center as a leader of a writing group that utilizes writing to heal. With this article, she hopes to inform her intended audience of doctors about a fairly alternative practice and convince them that it can actually heal their patients. In “Healing through the Written Word,” Cangialosi’s expert use of research, expert testimony,

In the body paragraph “Writing has the Power to Heal” Cangialosi sticks purely to writing in first-person perspective unlike any of her other paragraphs. She explains that “whichever form our writing takes, it has the power to heal us and to help us grow” (Cangialosi, 426). By using multiple first-person pronouns repeatedly, it brings the doctors into the discussion of how writing to heal works in the same way it would be presented to their patients. This inclusion of her audience in this discussion breaks the clinical mindset of doctors and helps them see through reflecting on themselves how their patients would feel like during the process. She adds that “writing helps us to form connections with what is going on inside us and with others” (Cangialosi, 426). This aspect of writing to heal shows her audience that when they are explaining this process to their patients they can reflect on their personal pains and be able to connect with them on how to overcome it. The repeated use of first-person perspective through pronouns like “our”, “us” and “we” allows sectors to remove themselves from being a doctor and to view this alternative practice from their own personal mind and the mind of a patient who would benefit greatly from it. When her audience believes that this would be a proper “prescription” for their patient, this connection instills more confidence in discussing this process because they are able to understand where their patient is coming