^{Return to note 23} Many researchers have challenged the claims by Pennebaker and his associates that writing about previously undisclosed trauma affords participants physiological benefits from writing about the events (Pennebaker & Seagal, 1999). Greenberg, Wortman, and Stone’s (1996) experimental investigation of the Pennebaker Paradigm assigned a different writing assignment to participants than any other experimental researchers had. They assigned female college student participants with trauma histories to one of three groups: one was to write about emotions and beliefs about their own real traumas, another was to write about their emotional reactions to and beliefs about imaginary traumas that they had not experienced, and the third group was to write about trivial topics of no emotional significance. Both groups of trauma-writing participants were judged (on the basis of content and fluency) to be equally engaged in the writing process, and both groups experienced the expected heightened arousal during and shortly after writing. The real trauma group, however, reported higher levels of being depressed. Greenberg et al.’s report interests me particularly for the claim that writing about a never experienced imaginary trauma resulted in the same physical health benefits as writing about one’s own trauma. Furthermore, writing about one’s own trauma—which tended to contain more sensory detail—led to more apparent avoidance behaviors, whereas writing about “imaginary trauma”—which tended to contain more cognitive, appraisal-type comments—led to no change in psychologically-based feelings or behaviors. In other words, the physiological improvements reported by researchers investigating Pennebaker’s Paradigm may be obtained just as effectively when not writing about one’s own trauma—and the emotional toll after writing may be less problematic for the writer.