We debated about this page.  We didn't want to suggest that we were writing for sick people.  But we noticed, over at the health club, a sign about Massatherapy.  Massatherapy seemed to be a lot like massage.  It obviously wasn't for sick people.  It seemed to be for anybody willing to pay for it. 

Then it hit us.  Nowadays, you don’t call something therapy because it’s for sick people.  You call something therapy so you can charge more for it.  So we’ll explain how therapeutic writing fits in with thinkering.  But wait.  There’s more!  We’ll include the explanation of therapeutic writing at no extra charge!  Just think of it as brain massage  for people who are not sick.

Psychologists have known for a long time that it helps to talk out personal difficulties with other people.  People talk to friends, acquaintances, strangers, bartenders, dogs—anyone who will listen.  On rare occasions, they even talk to their spouses, parents, or children.  There are hot-lines set up to let people talk about things that are troubling them.  Just in case their dogs won’t listen.

Psychologists knew about talking things out because it was common knowledge long before there were psychologists.  In fact, shortly after psychologists figured out that they were psychologists, they began to have people come to their offices and talk out their personal difficulties.  The psychologists called it therapy.  And charged for it.

This state of affairs bothered some other psychologists.  They wondered if the benefit came from the psychologist listening or from the person talking. 

Psychologists asked themselves, “If talking about personal difficulties helps, why not see if writing about them helps too.”

Psychologists talk to themselves, too.

You can guess the rest.  These psychologists did the obvious research.  And we wouldn't have mentioned this if writing didn't help.  People wrote about their problems and what they could do about the problems.  These were minor problems and the people were mostly college students.  Just ordinary people and everyday problems.  After they wrote, they felt better about the problems.  More confident about their ability to handle the problems.  More sure of themselves.

All these benefits just from writing.  No need to have anybody listen.  No chance for anybody to charge for it.  We suspect that one of the main benefits from writing (or talking) about personal problems is that it gets the language channel more involved in the job.