Writing as talk

Abstract

Historically, the psychotherapies have subscribed to an idea that the spoken word is the first language of psychotherapy. This idea has influenced my practice but work with Susan challenged this prejudice. We have worked together to find ways of using writing to communicate things which were not finding their way into spoken language. This paper shares some stories from our written and spoken conversations. Susan and I reflect on the place of writing in our work and talk about the experience of reading each other’s writing. In this paper, I propose that writing and reading are relational practices. I suggest the reflexive movement in these activities both anticipates and shapes the responses between self and other when while reading the writings to the writer-as- listener. In preparing and presenting these writings and reflections from within and about our conversations, I hope to create some coherence with a dialogical collaborative style of working and propose writing as a form of systemic practice and systemic inquiry.