"Writing and Healing and the Rhetorical Tradition"

Post-Tramatic stress is very real. I never knew how extensive the damage trauma does to a persons' brain. 

"Thus, the Greeks of this era viewed all disease not just what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder as open to the curative powers of language. But it might be more correct to suggest that the Greeks viewed the onset of disease as a form of trauma. In other words, what Entralgo calls the "primitive" character of disease might best be understood as the traumatic character of disease. This pre-classical notion of illness as possession by a punishing spirit perhaps what Receveur, in the poem quoted at the beginning of this essay, refers to as "small still-born terrors"jibes well with the twentieth-century notion of possession by a traumatic memory or an idee fixe. In fact, as Herman points out, part of what makes the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder so difficult is the stigma that attaches to its victims"

The ancient Greeks thought that words could take away evil disease-causing spirits. It's fascinating that Burner and Rogers belief in the healing power of words mimics such an old belief. Yet is also correct.