you are here [x]: Scarlet Star Studios > the Scarlet Letters > creata: the therapeutic aspects of blogging
<< before red76: blow back
after >> creata: the creative process

March 13, 2005

creata: the therapeutic aspects of blogging

by gl. at 7:54 pm

who better than me to attend a session about the therapeutic affect of blogs, right? alas, her history was full of innaccuracies and her assessments of the "first" blogging tools or the "first bloggers" were obviously influenced by popular rather than historical items.

you can tell she's studying to be an art therapist because she had us do an experiential exercise even though it was probably inappropriate for this context: we wrote something on a piece of paper we might not tell someone face to face, then she read one out loud, and everyone wrote something they might say to that person on another sheet of paper. obviously this was designed to mimic the blog/comment process, but the instructions were so vague and separated from the medium that it felt hollow and pointless (plus, the particpants being mostly art therapists, their comments were often things like, "i hear that you're frustrated. what can you do to change things?" ha!). not that she had any idea if any of us blogged: she asked if we all knew what a blog was, waited for us to nod, and then hurried on.

her thesis is about whether blogging is therapy, and her research consists of 40(!) surveys sent to bloggers (and with a 100% success rate i suspect she knew all of them), asking questions like, "if a major life event occured, would you be more likely to blog about it instead of or before going to therapy?" i'm paraphrasing because she didn't include a copy of the survey.

she wants to be a famous blogger. apparently her photoblog, which i ran across by accident, was mentioned in wired, but i can 't find a reference to it.

she seems very enthusiastic and passionate about the subject, though, and it was the first session where a genuine discussion took place. it also drew a younger crowd than is typical for the art therapy week. her drive is to find ways to create safer therapy spaces for bloggers. she wants to "read and write for the field," an unusual research inclination for an art therapist. she creating a found poem (a "poetic transcription" as a way to "display" qualitative data. interesting term: anonymous witnesses.

posted by gl. | March 13, 2005 7:54 PM | categories: classes & workshops