Art can help with healing. Art and Literature tell you truths about the world and about yourself that no one else can tell you. Edward Mendelson, English professor at Columbia University and author of The Things that Matter.
It’s no secret that I’m an avid reader. But an article, “A Book for Every Ailment,” in a recent issue of Real Simple Magazine introduced me to a new term - “bibliogtherapy.” Of course, I certainly understood what the word means by its two parts, “book” and “treatment.” But the essay by free lance writer Catherine Hong sent me in search of the concept. Shortly thereafter, I came across the same word in Susan Wiggs The Lost and Found Bookshop. Of course bookshop owners, avid readers, would find healing in their books.
The term, “bibliotherapy,” was coined and defined during WWI by American minister and essayist Samuel McChord Crothers, as the process of using books to teach those receiving medical care about their conditions. In other words, physicians and psychiatrists encourage the reading of specific books as part of a patient’s treatment. Early physicians found it a promising treatment for trauma.
According to a variety of sources, the concept itself is ancient. According to Jenni Ogden, Ph.D. writing for Psychology Today, King Ramses II of Egypt had a special chamber for his books; above the door were the words - “House of Healing for the Soul.” Good Therapy.com, a network of mental health professionals, acknowledge that ancient Grecian libraries were seen as secret places with curative powers.
According to the U. S. National Library of Medicine, National Institute of Health, the idea of using books to help people resolve problems was first used in America in its earliest years when physician and signer of the Declaration of Independence Benjamin Rush and Minson Galt II, physician and author, used the concept as an intervention technique in rehabilitation and the treatment of mental health issues.
Today, specialists, especially in the realm of mental health, will lead their patients to specific books addressing issues that each individual faces. Such therapy can aid in many ways including the idea that one is not alone in facing such difficulties.
For the rest of us who have found books to offer knowledge, inspiration, insight, escapism and a variety of other pluses, perhaps our favorite reading materials do provide therapy for us, too.
A number of studies underscore such positives.
Journalist Lauren Vinopal points to three studies out of Italy that found young Harry Potter fans are far more tolerant than those children who have not read the series. The study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology studied a group of fifth graders about their attitudes towards immigrants. Then the children read the J.K. Rowlings series. As they read, their attitudes changed. Following up with high school students who had read the series several years earlier, researchers found that they, too, were more tolerant that classmates who had not read the series. Other books probably produce the same effects, but the study focused on this series which accumulated a phenomenal readership worldwide.
Lani Peterson, Psy.D reports in Harvard Business Publishing that a 2000 study showed that when people read about an event, they displayed activity in the same regions of the brain that they would have if they had experienced it first hand. She goes on to explain that we remember information we receive in story form far more easily than we do from dry data. We all like a good story.
Both of these studies bring us to one of my favorite words - empathy,” to share the feelings of another. When I was teaching, I pulled from one of my journalistic experiences to explain. Years ago, I interviewed one of the first Wayne Countians to undergo open heart surgery. As he told me about the procedure, he gestured as he explained how ribs are pulled away for the surgeon to reach the heart. Thereafter, whenever I saw this interviewee on the street, at church, at a party, I experienced a fleeting sharp pain in my chest.
Of course, real empathy goes beyond the physical to the emotional. And that is what we as humans need to experience in relating to other people. Reading helps us nurture true empathy.
Or as author Gabrielle Kevin says, “We read to know we’re not alone. We read because we are alone. We read and we are not alone. We are not alone.”
2020
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