With the accessibility provided by the Internet, the reach of the writing therapies has increased considerably, as clients and therapists can work together from anywhere in the world, provided they can write the same language. They simply “enter” into a private “chat room” and engage in an ongoing text dialogue in “real time”.
This requires the services of a counsellor or therapist, albeit sitting at a computer. Given the huge disjunction between the amount of mental illness compared with the paucity of skilled resources, new ways have been sought to provide therapy other than drugs. In the more advanced societies pressure for cost-effective treatments, supported by evidence-based results, has come from both insurance companies and government agencies.
The role of the distance therapies
Ironically, the anonymity and invisibility provides a therapeutic environment that comes much closer than classical analysis to Freud’s ideal of the “analytic blank screen”. Sitting behind the patient on the couch still leaves room for a multitude of clues to the analyst’s individuality; e-therapy provides almost none. Whether distance and reciprocal anonymity reduces or increases the level of transference has yet to be investigated.
This suggests that written disclosure may reduce the physiological stress on the body caused by inhibition, although it does not necessarily mean that disinhibition is the causal mechanism underlying these biological effects.
The oldest and most widely practiced form of self-help through writing is that of keeping a personal journal or diary—as distinct from a diary or calendar of daily appointments—in which the writer records their most meaningful thoughts and feelings. One individual benefit is that the act of writing puts a powerful brake on the torment of endlessly repeating troubled thoughts to which everyone is prone.
Source: Wikipedia
