53-4 Review and Prospect of Psychological Displacement Writing Paradigm: Pronouns Characteristics and Its Beneficial Effects
| Shuh-Ren Jin | |
| University of Macau |
Since the first research on Psychological Displacement Paradigm in Diary-writing (PDPD) was published (Jin, 2005), there have been dozens of related papers or articles published at home and abroad. The PDPD requires participants to write about their daily events specifically with negative emotions using a fixed sequence of different personal pronouns (from I to you, then to he/she). To sort out, analyze and review these published studies, the main purpose of this paper was focus on reviewing the characteristics of pronouns and the healing effects of psychological displacements, explore the possible limitations of this method, and analyze the directions and topics for further research in the future.
In terms of four kinds of pronoun characteristics, the qualitative and quantitative research orientation enriched the depth and expanded nature of the pronoun characteristics as follows. (1) When writing in the "I" pronoun, people usually felt intensive emotional reactions. The characteristics of an "I" perspective include magnifying thoughts and feelings in a narrow vision, and expressing self-disclosed information via discourse model. (2) When they recounted the same life events using "you" as the subject, the contents sounded as if they were described by significant others with both self-caring and self- criticism attitudes. The "you" pronoun might rebuke the "I" occasionally as an adult disciplines a child’s misconduct. The characteristics of a "you" perspective signaled more rational with self-empathy and self-concern accordingly, and the negative emotion gradually eases. In addition, the pronoun of "you" was mainly based on the discourse model of consolation. (3) Lastly, when the same events stated using "s/he" as pronoun, the writer executed to be the most rational and least emotional. In this position, people detached themselves even further from the facts in a greatest psychological distance, and they took the widest range of perspectives as well. They told the story as if they were impartial and detached bystanders. The mentality was calm and rational, as the pronoun of "s/he" was based on the discourse model of audit. (4) When the "I" finally returned to the "I" position again, after experiencing the psychological spatial displacement, the individual could clearly apprehend the problem in the incident and also had obvious relief in a calmed emotional feeling. The pronoun of "back to I" focused on the discourse model of policymaking and consolation.
In the part of impact effects from PDPD, after rotated writing by the author, the state of highly presence gradually shifted attentions from external attribution to inner self-relationship, or interpersonal relationship, and then produced significant emotional, cognitive and behavioral changes. However, this writing paradigm also encountered some negative effects or questioning on no effective.
As to the reason why psychological displacement writing caused healing effects, this study founded that the effect of change in PDPD, which was the unique aspect of PDPD than other psychological distance studies, were primarily due to (1) the gradual shift and transformation of different pronouns, (2) the self-object transformation effect of "you" pronouns, and (3) the cumulative conversion effect of "s/he" pronoun, (4) the "back to I" moderation of Zhong Yong global thinking, (5) the cognitive transformation caused by the change of psychological distance, and (6) the panoramic effect of repeated writing of multiple perspectives.
Finally, based on the reviewing and analyzing on the previous research of PDPD, this thesis proposed several topics and suggestions for future applications on psychological practice and empirical research as well.
Keywords
Psychological displacement, PDPD, psychological distance, review and prospect, writing therapy
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