AustLit

'Workbook Questions: Writing of Torture, Trauma Experience' is designed to facilitate survivors of trauma and torture in writing of traumatic experiences, even if complex or untold, by using clinically planned questions to create a space where the survivor's sense of self and identity can remain securely intact. This workbook and its questions were developed by the clinician, academic and researcher Margaret Bennett, who, for a decade, was the Director of STARTTS (NSW Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors), and by the acclaimed author Jennifer Maiden, who was their Writer in Residence, and has conducted over a thousand other literary workshops dealing with traumatic material. This book includes a far-ranging, informal discussion between Bennett and Maiden on the questions' genesis and the theory and clinical experience underpinning them. Maiden has noted the similarity between a professional firefighter extinguishing flames by focusing initially on the fire's outskirts, and the way in which this workbook's questions address traumatic experiences, by asking first about experiences on a trauma's outskirts - past emotions, events and sensations - but ultimately asking about survivors' current situation, feelings and insight into what would help them thrive.' (Publication summary)