What is Bibliotherapy?

Bibliotherapy is now used frequently among psychology practices to help "facilitate psychological growth and healing through reading" (Schwanenflugel & Knapp, 2019). It's recognized as legitimate therapeutic method to help with struggles such as grief, mental health, common life issues, and so much more. Psychologist often "prescribe books" in order to necessitate conversation in a group or one-on-one level to help process struggles--a group of people dealing with similar issues and read and respond to a text together, or that same conversation can happen with a helper/guide. Basically, book clubs are therapeutic and essential to your health (Schwanenflugel & Knapp, 2019).

But bibliotherapy isn't something that you should only do if a doctor/psychologist prescribes it to you; bibliotherapy is easily something you can do on your own. Whether it's returning to a favorite read to feel that familiarity or picking up that new book that has all the elements that you need to process and understand outside worries, you are practicing bibliotherapy.

People in the field of psychology recognize that there are three therapeutic stages of bibliotherapy:

1. Identification--the reader forming a bond with the main character in the text, finding yourself identifying with their problems and goals.

2. Catharsis--comes about by experiencing everything the characters are experiencing as they work toward the resolution.

3. Insight--the conscious understanding of similarities between the reader's own characteristics and circumstances with that of the characters', followed by the decision to apply ideas or lessons from the text to the reader's own life (Schwanenflugel & Knapp, 2019).

It's official, books help--sciences proves it. The video below just adds even more evidence to this conclusion.