You can exaggerate, curse, brag, write lovingly or angrily… Relationships can be explored in a non-threatening way and areas of genuine worry can be pin-pointed. Behaviour can be rehearsed on paper – and much apprehension removed.”The Jungian psychologist, Professor Ira Progoff has taken matters a step further. His diary-keeping technique involves using a loose-leaf folder and making entries in specialised sections. In his book At a Journal Workshop he claims, “Under pressure of events, our lives become hard-packed like soil; as we work in the journal we gradually break into this hardness… it becomes possible for us to move more freely within ourselves.”The easiest way to learn about Progoff’s ideas is at a “journal workshop” (hence the odd name of the book), but these are infrequent in Britain.

However, armed with the book it is quite possible to follow the process. Sections include “steppingstones”, in which you list eight to 10 significant events in your life and then explore each more deeply; “roads not taken”, where you try to salvage something positive from old regrets and neglected ambitions; “dialogue”, sections where you enter into a written conversation with persons living or dead with whom you have unfinished business (often guilt feelings after a loved one has died). However it appears that the best self-help comes in writing our own diaries. Since the Seventies, there has been a wave of interest in diary-writing as therapy in America. Busy career women are encouraged to work out on paper problems that might otherwise fester inside.”Use your diary as a tool for growth,” wrote Dr Tristine Rainer in her book, The New Diary “In your journal you are free. If Joe Orton’s diaries shock with their frank sexual content, Samuel Pepys’s attempts to disguise the sexual element in his with a code make us smile.Diary revelations can give unexpected insights. Could Dorothy’s more famous brother William have sunk to sneaking a look at his sister’s diary? Her entry for 31 July 1802 reads, ”When we were in the woods beyond Gobarrow Park we saw a few daffodils close to the water side.. as we went along there were more and yet more.. I never saw daffodils so beautiful.. some rooted their heads…

I would in fact question whether a dairy published in the writer’s lifetime can be totally honest. Anais Nin wrote some 168 volumes describing her bohemian life in Paris and her numerous love affairs – but what was not revealed (and was in fact carefully concealed) was the fact that Nin had a nice husband at home who financed all her adventures.Reading diaries, in the same way as reading biographies, can help us in the subconscious search for a pattern in life. and the rest togged and reeled and danced…”Although these diaries have now reached a wider public, in most cases their original conception was that of a secret “friend” in whom to confide. A couple of years ago she was able to see the sheet displayed in the village of Pieve S Stefano, now known as the Citta del Diario, in Tuscany.Of course, people decide to keep diaries for different reasons. Anais Nin started hers at the age of 11 as a “letter” to her father, who had abandoned the family. George Sand kept a wild diary with the intention of sending it to Alfred de Musset at the end of their affair.