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
Link to original post: