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Expressive Writing is a form of writing therapy developed primarily by James W. Pennebaker in the late 1980's.

Description
The seminal expressive writing study instructed participants in the experimental group to write about a ‘past trauma’, expressing their very deepest thoughts and feelings surrounding it. In contrast, controls were instructed to write about neutral topics in an unemotional fashion. For both groups, the timescale was 15 minutes of continuous writing repeated over four consecutive days. It was also instructed that should a participant run out of things to write, they should go back to the beginning and repeat themselves, perhaps writing a little differently. Several measurements were made before and after, but the most striking finding was that relative to the control group, the experimental group made significantly fewer visits to a physician in the following months.

These results have hatched a whole host of further studies, numbering over 200. One of these went on to strongly suggest that expressive writing has the potential to actually provide a ‘boost’ to the immune system, perhaps explaining the reduction in physician visits. This was shown by measuring lymphocyte response to the foreign mitogens Phytohaemagglutinin (PHA) and Concanavalin A (ConA) just prior to and 6 weeks after writing. The significantly increased lymphocyte response led to speculation that expressive writing enhances immunocompetence.