One may be quick to regard the idea
of bibliotherapy as a recent invention, but it has, in fact, been around since
ancient times. Many ancient civilizations such as the Greeks and Egyptians
would utilize signage outside their libraries reading “healing for the soul.”
While the idea of using books to help heal has been around practically forever,
the word itself is a more recent invention which was coined in 1916 by a
minister named Samuel Crothers. Two of the driving factors behind the
development of bibliotherapy as we know it today were veterans and
institutionalized mental health care. Veterans coming home from both World Wars
dealt with an incredible amount of emotional pain and stress so they were often
given reading materials to help them cope with the realities and horrors of
war. More importantly, however, was the use of bibliotherapy in institutionalized
mental health care due to the fact that in the middle of the last century it
was becoming more decentralized. As out-patient care became more and more
prominent, bibliotherapy programs were taken from the hospital and into
communities.
There are many different ways to
incorporate bibliotherapy into treatment. Both psychologists and philosophers who
specialize in counseling philosophy can benefit their practices enormously from
helping their patients find books that can help them work through certain issues
they may be having. Bibliotherapy has also been adopted by many practitioners
in the anti-psychiatry movement. They argue, much in the same way that Alain de
Botton does, that we are medicalizing people and trying to treat them with
medication that m
If you would like to read more about bibliotherapy check out
this links:
If you would like to read more about anti-psychiatry check out
these books:
Mad in America: Bad
Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill by
Robert Whitaker
Crazy Like Us: The
Globalization of the American Psyche by Ethan Watters
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And for those interested in Philosophical Counseling, see Lou Marinoff's "Plato Not Prozac"...
ReplyDeleteI think most of us in philosophy were early-adopters of bibliotherapy (though many have been professionally trained away from it, unfortunately).