“As a teenager, I wrote a diary, I put my ideals there. It gave me keys to stay connected to who I am. Even today, writing allows me to cast my reality in words. ” Author, Alexandra Brunbrouck also agrees with the idea of ​​the academic Philippe Lejeune: for him, who has worked a lot on private writing, the journal is a form of memory, it accompanies life. The diary can also be a support, at a time in one’s life when one is facing a trauma. As Alexandra Brunbrouck asserts, “Writing is a time of listening to oneself”.

“Putting words into what we are going through makes it palpable. Writing a private diary allows you to give a story to emotions, to feelings. ” The author, trainer and lecturer Alexandra Brunbrouck believes that posing in writing allows you to measure the state in which you feel. And so, the diarist, the one who writes a diary, will be able, in the difficulty, to identify the directions to be taken, will put words on his needs. In times of grace, he will realize how his needs are being fed. And will emerge, then, in front of his conscience, the means by which he finds the keys of his own well-being.

Obviously, as psychiatrist Guy Besançon points out, the diary always revolves around the life and work of an author. It allows, continues Alexandra Brunbrouck, to access a better connection to oneself: “Writing a journal is like making a date with yourself”, she slips. She herself always puts “His sincerity” in her writings, whether intended for a large audience or only for her. She insists : “Writing is a way of loving the world”. Writing helps to move forward. It fulfills multiple functions. She is, in a way, “The swiss army knife of intuition”…

“Becoming aware of one’s path is already a therapy”, suggests Alexandra Brunbrouck. Psychiatrist Guy Besançon also insists on the almost psychotherapeutic dimension of writing a diary: it can be “A refuge against depression, even against the psychotic rocker”. The Journal of Terror written by Cardoso is a striking example in this regard.

Depression, the reversal on oneself of an aggressiveness initially turned towards the disappeared object, is present in many published diaries. Like the diary of Henri-Frédéric Amiel, the most famous psychasthenes in literature, which, in its 16 pages, constantly gives in to depressive complaints, even to pejorative visions of himself. He evokes his doubts, his hesitations. For Amiel, keeping this journal is both a daily obligation and a vital necessity. She is almost a real love object … 

The intimate writing conceals key functions. In particular, by harmonizing the unconscious psychic forces, it would promote an internal balance, according to Guy Besançon. It ensures sufficient respect for reality. The therapeutic aspect is particularly strong when the story of an illness constitutes the framework of an intimate story: this was the case, for example, for the writer Claude Roy, who, suffering from lung cancer, kept his journal as his illness progressed.

The diary, estimated the writer Zoé Oldenbourg, is a friend, but “One of those loyal and a little boring friends that we forget as soon as the first opportunity for a more interesting meeting presents itself”. Zoe Eldenbourg also considered that “The beauty of the diary lies in its weaknesses”.

Written document that most closely resembles raw experience, it reveals a lot of oneself. “It’s raw material”, confie Alexandra Brunbrouck.  “It is shapeless and fluid, dependent on the thousand chances of a daily experience”, writes Zoe Oldenbourg again, before specifying: “It’s a safe, dated notebook, filled with life lived from day to day. It soothes an anguish without a precise but cruel object ”.

One limitation of the diary, as a literary genre, would be its boring aspect. “This egotistical talk seemed effeminate, tedious, softening”, Hamel judge. And yet he points out: “These notes have various advantages, for the memory, for the heart and even the thought. I remember it, I relieve myself and I think about it. Often, I even make up my mind. “

The diary is a creation. For Philippe Lejeune, each newspaper is a work of art, a unique object, testifying to extraordinary forms of creativity. It can be embellished with drawings, collages.

Thus, Sabine Darras-Morandini, coach, was introduced to the practice of the creative journal. Unlike the diary, the space-time frame is fixed in advance: one, or even two blank pages, A4 format. The time of the exercise is determined. If this practice does not require to be an outstanding draftsman, “It allows you to take a distance, to put your feet up”, explains Sabine Darras-Morandini, “A bit like going from 2D to 3D”. And while she kept a diary for twenty years, the creative diary now allows her to “No longer be blocked in the description”, forces him “to take out the essence of his thought”. It is “A time for oneself, to agree listening, benevolence and empathy”.

And, in the digital age, this newspaper can now take the modern form of a blog. Thus, Carole Guelfucci, author of serendipidoc, writes: “If I have a taste for writing, intimate or not, I have long lost the taste for handwriting. This is mainly because my thinking has become computerized over time. By that I mean I type as fast as I think. But I learned, listening to Philippe Lejeune, that what I gain, compared to the spiral notebook, in style and satisfaction of the very clean and clear copy, I lose it in spontaneity, in setting page, in artistic expression. “

The content of the diary differs according to the diarists. It can, for example, be a series of religious, philosophical, political meditations, a kind of philosophical journal, asceticism in the encounter with oneself. Today, in France, three million people keep newspapers, in their notebooks, on computers or on the web. This practice joins psychoanalysis: intimate writing is developed around this quest for the lost memory, founder of the symptom, which it is a question of rediscovering through analysis. Lifting amnesia from a repressed memory will help break free from an embarrassing or painful symptom.

Dance Self-writing, Michel Foucault believes that the act of writing is an aesthetic of existence. An ancient process, already present in Greco-Roman culture, this practice has multiple functions, in particular that of “To overcome the dangers of loneliness”. It is also a “Work, not only on actions, but more precisely on thought”. This writing reveals the movements of the soul. It is, for Foucault, “a weapon in the spiritual combat”.