Joined Imaginations: Writing and Language in Therapy

As the title, Joined Imaginations, suggests, this volume takes us into the lives of Peggy Penn's clients and illustrates how her love of language and its infinite possibilities invites the creation of new stories, new possibilities, and joined imaginations. Peggy positions herself as a master of double description as she takes on the serious business of clients' problems by expanding their voices as well as the means by which those voices are given expression. This book is about language and writing and therapy. Joined Imaginations draws on Mikhail Bakhtin's idea of "dialogism in therapy" and attempts to illustrate how we author ourselves in conversation with others. Using the ideas of inner and outer dialogue, coupled with an understanding of subtext (an idea taken from the author's work in the theatre) the therapeutic conversation is seen as creating a text. Therapist and client build a new story together -- in their talk and in writing -- it is a "participant text." Creating a participant text is more than the usual talk of therapy. This volume features the use of writing as a central part of the therapeutic process. The client writes from new and appreciative stances and the byproduct is a change in one's life story; the result, a "kind of" literature. The act of writing invites meanings that have been ignored or unspoken into the relational field by way of the text. Words cross or bump up against one another when captured in writing, cracking open and revealing other words that may evoke experiences of self with others. This book is for all readers who use language as a treatment option. It is the author's hope that their extended language will attract others. Language has the properties of mystery and insight beyond its use in direct expression. More than reading a volume on social construction and therapeutic practice, this book takes us into the magical world of language and the drama of life.