[2023-05-09] Bibliotherapy
After completing a job interview a dozen years ago, my daughter reported that it had been a resounding success and explained why:
Part of why I did well was that I’d just read an article on the best divas of the past 25 years, and it made me happy. The women featured in the article were lauded for having attitudes, for going through periods when their weight fluctuated, and for generally being crazy and imperfect. In some weird way, it made me feel like I am okay the way I am, flaws and all. In this article, deviance was celebrated as something awesome. And I learned that if these aberrant traits could be seen as assets, then some people just might appreciate my charming imperfections. It really helped me to feel like I didn’t have to present myself as perfect during the interview. And that, ironically, made me come off better, since I was so relaxed in being me.
In telling me this story after her interview, Melanie explained that in her Women’s Studies class at university, she had learned that girls who read about successful women before taking a test felt more confident and performed better. That fascinated me. A subsequent search led me to the article Using Biography to Counsel Gifted Young Women. I noted two interesting quotes from the piece:
Bibliotherapy happens when intelligent young women see something of themselves in a biography, identify with the person whose life story is being presented, reflect on that identification, and undergo some emotional growth as a result of that reading experience.
Biographies provide realistic portrayals of women’s lives, leaving great impressions and eye-opening inspirational messages for gifted females.
I had forgotten the term bibliotherapy until I read it again this evening while perusing some posts from my Café Jen blog. Other articles I looked at this evening refer more broadly to bibliotherapy as an approach for helping anyone, not just gifted young women. In What Is Bibliotherapy? author Sara Lindberg defines the concept in this way:
When dealing with conditions such as anxiety and depression or coping with grief, sometimes it can be difficult to make sense of what is happening in your mind and body, especially if you don’t have any other experience to compare it to. Bibliotherapy aims to bridge this gap by using literature to help you improve your life by providing information, support, and guidance in the form of reading books and stories.
That made me think of stories like mine. In All About Bibliotherapy, PyschCentral explains how bibliotherapy helps patients:
It’s natural to feel overwhelmed, alone, or lost when you’re going through a big change in life or are experiencing mental health challenges.
Literature—both fiction and nonfiction—might help you develop a higher level of awareness and understanding of your motivations and behavior.
You could learn the "why" behind what you’re experiencing through science-based reading. At the same time, you could have guides, exercises, and coping recommendations on hand for easy reference.
Through fiction, you could view your scenario through the eyes of a character. In many cases, you might reach an emotional release through that fictional journey before you reach it in your own journey.
This emotional experience in fiction is what Aristotle referred to as "catharsis" during his own observations on the impact of stories on human emotions.
This reinforces the value of storytelling for helping people to understand and to process their experience. It also underscores the need for diversity in literature: many voices, many stories, many characters, reflecting the breadth of the human condition.
