Therapy On Paper: Therapeutic Letters and the Tone of Relationship

Abstract

This article offers a selected piece of interpretive research extracted from the context of a larger doctoral research study, which examined the intervention of therapeutic letters. This particular article highlights one segment of the research involving a family member suffering with the influence of multiple sclerosis on his life and relationships, and the examination of the influence of therapeutic letters in the course of his clinical work at the Family Nursing Unit at the University of Calgary. The findings of this research offer suggestions, not as a template, but as an inspiration and evocation to write therapeutic letters that are attentive to the conservation of tone, harmony, and authenticity, and that are large enough to sustain a meeting of relationship.