Curative writing

Curative Writing provides a platform for everyone from students to busy professionals to reconnect with their own inner resources, and with their authentic voice. This unique yet simple writing practise reveals to us who we are and why we are here.

​Unconscious processes govern much of human behaviour. The unconscious mind communicates with the conscious mind via creativity, intuition, empathy, and through the physical body. In the early twentieth century a new field of research opened up to investigate the latent wisdom of the unconscious mind which is now known as depth psychology.
​
Kylie has taught on the world-leading Creative Writing degree program at Bath Spa University in the U.K. and has worked as a mentor and an intermediary in marginalised communities. She facilitates seminars and workshops for arts organisations, within the university setting, in the community, and in the corporate domain.

Origins

The principles of Curative Writing are drawn from the ground-breaking life-work of the depth psychologist Ira Progoff, who wrote the first doctoral thesis on Carl Jung and further progressed Jung’s work into unconscious processes. It is also informed by Narrative Therapy, developed by psychotherapist David White, and from the research of social psychologist James Pennebaker and his insight into life-writing as a means of discovering personal meaning.

Progoff developed a series of journaling techniques, which he called ‘dialogues’, to support individuation: the individual’s search for identity and meaning. He was fascinated by creativity and its power to transform, and believed that our greatest creative work is our own life. Curative Writing takes Progoff’s philosophy into the twenty-first century and into institutions, communities and the workplace. 

Dr Kylie Fitzpatrick is a published author whose doctoral thesis explored creativity and the unconscious mind. She is a Research Fellow at the Australian National University. Her ongoing post-doctoral research explores the cultivation of empathy through life-writing.