IS THE REEXPERIENCE OF PAINFUL EMOTION THERAPEUTIC

Recently a great deal of attention has been focused on the health prom oting benefits that can accrue from revisiting painful emotion. The ra tionales for revisiting painful emotions include those that assume ree xperiencing ng emotion per se can be health-promoting. Another view st ipulates that revisiting painful emotion will only yield benefit if th ere is some recasting/restructuring of the emotional memory. Research pertinent to the various rationales is discussed. Then research on the impact of emotional expression and outcomes studies of therapies desi gned to enhance emotional experience are reviewed. Good supporting evi dence is found for the effectiveness of behavioral exposure therapies where the duration of emotional exposure is carefully controlled, as w ell as for the salutary impact of talking or writing about trauma by n ormally functioning individuals. On the other hand, studies evaluating the impact of experiencing and expressing painful emotion in an unstr uctured fashion with clinical samples suggest that the process can be harmful. Incorporating findings from the behavioral exposure literatur e and from the Pennebaker writing-about-trauma studies, the case for e voking emotional memories for the purpose of developing new responses is advanced. The dangers of encouraging emotional experience in absenc e of acquisition of a new response to the emotion-evoking material are discussed. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd.