Continuing Education Course

This course offers an exploration of memoir writing as a therapeutic tool within prison settings.  Through writing exercises, guided reflection, and psychoanalytic insights, participants will examine themes of transformation, conscience, trauma, creativity, and social change.   Readings will include excerpts from "The House of the Dead" by Dostoevsky; "The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness" by Simon Wiesenthal; “The Man Died" by Wole Soyinka, "Orange is the New Black" by Piper Kerman; and "The Autobiography of Malcolm X.”  The course is structured to help participants gain a deeper understanding of the psychological and emotional impact of incarceration, as well as to create practical, therapeutic resources for use in jails and prisons.  Instructors and healthcare professionals will work collaboratively to develop a workbook that integrates prompts addressing themes such as internal conflict and enactment, the development of conscience and moral reckoning, drives and desires, insight and self-awareness, projective identification, and forgiveness and repair.

Learning Objectives

• Describe the role of memoir in prison settings, with a focus on the therapeutic potential of storytelling and self-reflection.
• Examine how writing can help individuals confront guilt, moral dilemmas, and past actions. This module would also involve healthcare professionals analyzing how these themes can be addressed through workbook materials
• Explain how the memoir process can help individuals access and process repressed trauma and memories from their past.