Bibliotherapy

Bibliotherapy
1/10/08 at 12:32:43 PM

—Sue Hunter-Weir, Community Coordinator
Arts Student Community

Thanks (or blame) for this posting goes to Rebecca Rassier for having forwarded to the coordinators a column from the New York Times titled, “Will the Humanities Save Us?” Fighting words to be sure, as the 484 posted comments to that column demonstrate. And, it came hot on the heels of an article in The New Yorker titled “Twilight of the Books: What Will Life Be Like if People Stop Reading?”

Oddly enough, those articles appeared about the same time that I stumbled onto something called “bibliotherapy.” It’s not a new idea, although Spellcheck doesn’t yet recognize it as a word (for that matter it doesn’t recognize Spellcheck as a word either, although Google does). Bibliotherapy is pretty much what it sounds like: therapy (for both physical and psychological conditions) that is based on the premise that books have the power to heal. Mind you, no one is claiming that that power is unlimited or that bibliotherapy is a substitute for conventional medical treatment—only that literature has a place in what its practitioners call adjunctive therapy.

How is it supposed to work? The main idea is that books can help people solve problems. No surprise there. The types of problems that bibliotherapists claim can be addressed through guided reading and discussion are problems with self-concept, with charting a plan of action, with stress reduction, and with understanding the motivations and behavior of others. While some therapists rely heavily on self-help books, others believe that reading great (or at least very good) literature is likely to have the greatest effect.

In one county in England there is a pilot project involving 50 on-going reading groups whose members are people with a range of physical and psychological problems. Some are bipolar, others are run-away teens, still others have neurological diseases, including Alzheimers. Although it may seem unlikely that reading poetry (or having it read to them) could significantly improve the lives of those with Alzheimers, medical staff who work with reading-group members claim to have seen some remarkable successes. They make no claims that poetry can “cure” dementia, but have observed that people can recall poetry memorized decades ago even though they have lost the ability to formulate a coherent sentence. People struggling with the burdens imposed on them by chronic illnesses seem to find that escaping into a good book offers them a respite from their cares. Run-away teens discover that they are not the first, or only, ones to have had certain experiences or thoughts—i.e., they are not alone.

No doubt there are a number of people crafting grant proposals to test the validity of bibliotherapists’ claims, as well there should be. Will the humanities save us? Maybe, maybe not. Will the sciences or technology save us? Does anyone ever ask them if they can?

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