Poetry as therapy

'The poets and philosophers before me discovered the unconscious.  What I discovered was the scientific method by which the unconscious can be studied.' Freud (probably a remark made in 1928 to Professor Becker in Berlin)

Or, in the words of Jacques Lacan, who has been referred to as the most controversial psychoanalyst since Freud: 'I think where I am not, therefore I am where I do not think.'

And what is it about writing poetry that can blur the distinction between conscious and unconscious?  
'[Poetic] language stretches our conceptual frameworks and liberates our thinking. It is a language distinct from that ordinary language use for communication, the language of everyday speech, though it is recognizable within the terms of such ordinary communication. But it is also a language that draws attention to itself as language, a language of materiality, rather than the apparent transparency of ordinary speech in which the reader/hearer is encouraged to forget the words and to move straight to the world to which the words are supposed to refer. Poetic language advertises the writer/speaker’s efforts to encase concepts or objects in sounds and rhythms. The recipient of such a language is therefore encouraged to notice language in use, rather than moving directly to the ‘reality’ or the abstraction to which the words are supposed to refer.' Julia Kristeva

Soranus of Ephesus was the first noted practitioner of poetry therapy as such. He was born in Ephesus, practiced in Alexandria and then Rome. He was one of the chief representatives of the methodical school of medicine in which the rules of practice were simple and based on the theory that attributed all diseases to an adverse state of 'internal pores'. His suggestions for treatment of nervous disorders resemble modern psychotherapy.

Poetry has power therapeutically because it is a way for patients to 'find the truth of their own experience reflected back in a way they can recognise.' Dr Kenneth P. Gorelick, psychiatrist, advocate of poetry therapy.

'Poetry can capitalise on the ability to contain self-expression. Feeling and perception may deepen into greater understanding or may be transformed, resulting in emotional reparation, resolution of conflicts, and a sense of well-being.' Debbie McCullis, from 'Research on Writing Approaches in Mental Health', edited by Luciano L'Abate, Laura G Sweeney.

There are three domains of poetry therapy. 
1. The receptive-prescriptive which uses existing poetry to elicit responses.
2. The expressive-creative, giving a client the chance to write.
3. The symbolic-ceremonial, which is connected to the power of ritual and symbols. from Poetry Therapy: Using Words to Heal
by Barbara Trainin Blank, The New Social Worker. 

https://www.socialworker.com/feature-articles/practice/Poetry_Therapy:_Using_Words_to_Heal/