Intensive Journal Program for Self-Development
Progoff Series of Workshops

About the method | Journal Feedback Process

Journal Feedback™ Process

Journal Feedback™ Process

“Diary writing usually involves the unstructured, chronological recording of the events of a person’s life....the mere fact of continuously writing entries...is not sufficient in itself to bring about deep changes in a person’s life. To achieve a significant transformation in a personality, strong forces of energy must be generated.”

Dr. Ira Progoff

The Journal Feedback process is one of Progoff’s major contributions to the field of integrated systems for psychological growth. It can help you move forward in your process, obtain insights from different perspectives, and see connections and relationships between different areas of your life.

Working in each of the Intensive Journal exercises at least once creates a base or foundation from which to build. Then, you go through the iterative process of reading back and moving to the appropriate section within the Intensive Journal workbook, as you ask yourself:

“Where else can I go with this material?
“What personal or transpersonal leads are created?”

Moving to the appropriate Intensive Journal section that pertains to those areas and continuing the process of reading back and deepening or extending your work in that area would follow. While this concept may sound straightforward, the Journal Feedback technique is a powerful process working within you taking place over time.

The Journal Feedback effect is created by the combination and interaction of procedures within the Intensive Journal process and structure. It is a cumulative impact of unfoldment and integration between areas of your life, generating energy and momentum within you as it draws the potential of your life forward. The Journal Feedback process can create growth within us, without any conscious decisions on our part, bypassing our old habits and thought processes. The structure of the Intensive Journal workbook provides the means for the Journal Feedback technique to take place. The Journal Feedback process implements Progoff’s philosophy of working in a non-analytical mode, building cumulatively insights over time as you work in your life.

Example of Journal Feedback process:

You may have written a dialogue with your spouse or “significant other” in the Dialogue with Persons exercise. In this writing, you may have written about the quality of your relationship or marriage. As you read back the dialogue, ask yourself where else it calls your attention. Where else can you go in the Intensive Journal workbook to explore your relationship? One possibility is to use the Dialogue with Events, Situations and Circumstances, exercise, where a situation is defined as something over an extended period of time, to explore the relationship.

Notice that you are now approaching this issue from a different vantage point, creating another way to further the process of exploring the issue. You would then continue this iterative process of reading back and writing and then moving to other Intensive Journal exercises that call your attention.

Dr. Progoff emphasizes the importance of the Journal Feedback method as follows:

“The self-multiplying, cumulative effect of the Journal Feedback process makes it a great force for change. It generates a power which cumulates in the unconscious depths behind the mind in the very midst of conscious thinking and writing. And then it thrusts forward in the form of new experiences, new recognitions, new ideas and emotions.”