Writing Silently, in Longhand

One of the Intensive Journal's important guidelines is maintaining complete silence. The first workshop I attended had more than fifty participants. We all sat at tables, in a huge meeting room. We didn't converse with each other, not even by the obligatory social greetings.  As a tool in maintaining silence, we wrote in longhand. This, too, is a founding principle of the Intensive Journal-- writing in longhand.

Silence and longhand are two qualities that may discourage people from attending an Intensive Journal workshop. People gather together as strangers, and they remain strangers, yet they sit together and write in longhand about the most acute aspects of their lives. Sharing is not encouraged. In fact, sharing occurs at the invitation of the leader, and only then at fixed intervals. When sharing occurs, response is not allowed. When a participant reads a small portion of what he or she has written, the group does not show a reaction. The leader may ask one or two questions, like, "To what is this drawing your attention?" or, "Where else in the Journal might you go with this?" 

The idea is to provide a space in which threatening psychic material can emerge without threat, and be processed within a framework that does not overwhelm the participant. In practice, a charged atmosphere grows out of the combination of people keeping silence and writing in longhand. Each person supports and witnesses the efforts of the others, but without having to risk judgement or rejection.

One might ask, "In what way does the Journal atmosphere differ from that of a library?"

People who sit in silence and write in libraries do so with differing goals. One person might write a resume, another a novel, a letter to Grandma, or a term paper. Some people use computers, others use pens and paper. They sit in silence, yet they do not enter into a psychic meeting ground, and they do not effect each other's efforts.

In a Journal workshop, however, all participants are writing from their own personal resources; they're writing about the conditions of their lives. They are writing in response to prompts arranged in a particular order within the structure of the Journal. A trained leader facilitates the flow of exercises. A sort of entrainment grows out of the silence, as if all participants unite somewhere in an area not defined by the walls of the room. Progoff offers the metaphor of the underground stream, to which each person is connected by a private well, the well into which they descend whenver they participate in a Journal workshop.

They write in silence. Sometimes they pause to think, to feel. Sometimes they write so fast their wrists become sore. Each knows the others are experiencing the same process, and each respects that the emotions of the others are strong, and sometimes not pleasant. That's OK. The atmosphere of the Journal workshop holds everyone together in silence.The soft pushing of pens along lines of paper is the predominating sound.