BIBLIOTHERAPY

Definition
Benefits of Bibliotherapy
Developmental Appropriateness
Choice of Books
What is bibliotherapy?
It is one of an enormous range of methods for helping
human beings in emotional distress.
The word itself suggests a specific therapeutic modality
(as in art thepary, occupational therapy or dance therapy -
all of which were developed specifically to meet the needs
of patients perceived wholly or partly beyond the reach of
mainstream psychotherapeutic methods)
Psychotherapy comprises a body of knowledge about
what may go wrong with human beings, with a set of
practices designed to improve happiness and competence
in the face of life’s inevitable stresses.
In fact, bibliotherapy has not remotely established its
claim to such status, and may never do so, but it still has
a direct, though peripheral, relationship to the whole field
of psychotherapy.
However, because the printed text (biblio-) is the medium
through which the helping / healing is considered to occur
(whereas the concept should really cover non-printed
‘texts’ such as oral story-tellig and the viewing of visual
narratives like films and picture books), bibliotherapy must
also be considered in relation to the study of literature as
received by its audience, a field now categorised as
reception theory (Tabbert, 1979) and reader response.
With these bibliotherapy once again enjoys a presently
tenuous but potentially significant connection.
In pre-literature cultures, narratives has always
functioned in multiple ways, preserving accumulated
knowledge, articulating meaning, offering cathartic
release and pleasure, and promoting ‘healing’ in the
broad sense of reassurance as to each listener’s place in
the scheme of things.
In its broadest historical context, the concept of
bibliotherapy belongs to the ancient dulcis et utile
debate, in which some scholars advocated a role for
literature as ‘useful’ or ‘instructive’ in some moral sense,
which others maintained that stories existed primarily or
even purely to give pleasure.
The basic idea of bibliotherapy, as established by
librarians, runs approximately as follows:

 A child or adult has a problem. A skilled librarian, teacher or

‘reading therapist’ suggests a story which in some way
bears on that problem. If the intervention is successful, the
reader recognises that the book has something personally
significant to say to him / her, perhaps becomes concious of
the dimensions of his / her problem, and sometimes
perceives potential solutions to it. The reader then returns
the book to the professional, perhaps wishing to discuss it
(and through it, his or her own problems), perhaps asking
for more books ‘like that one’, which the professional then
sensitively provides on the basis of feedback as to the
reader’s reception of the first.
Pre-literature in our own and other cultures
spontaneously compose songs, chants, monologues and
other forms of ‘phatic’ expression, often to the
accompaniment of motor play, and apparently in rough
imitation of adult talk, song and story.
Children who grow up with television emulate its manner
and matter in their compositions (Sutton-Smith 1981);
those brought up on oral stories are influenced by that
mode, and print-soaked children imitate the mode of print
(Crago and Crago 1983).
There are, however, distinctive structural principles in
children’s compositions which mark them off from adult
models, and which suggest some inmate paradigm that
modifies direct imitation.