Most of us have ever felt when reading a book a feeling of calm, consolation, relief. Somehow, what happened in the book, their characters, their emotions, managed to connect deeply with what we were living in reality, reflecting our own doubts and desires and even giving us the key to solving our problems.
We are made of stories and these help us to live and build ourselves as people. Any teenager will see life with other eyes after meeting Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of The guardian between the rye. Someone who has lost a loved one will feel wrapped when reading The ridiculous idea of not seeing you again from Rosa Montero. And those who crushed and compare all the time with others, destroying their self -esteem, will be comforted reading how the protagonist of Cardigan, by Daphne Du Maurier, destroy her own life due to the obsession with her husband’s previous wife.
Bibliotherapy: Read to be better
The use of reading as a therapeutic resource is called literature. A relatively new term in our country but that, little by little, is gaining importance and is being used more and more in libraries and medical services such as, in this project of the Saúde Galego Service.
Laura García is a journalist and for many years she worked on the radio talking about books. It was at that time, about 15 years ago, when he read an article in English about literature and began investigating it. He read books about it, conducted some courses and, perhaps the most important thing, began to classify his own readings according to the effect they could have on their potential readers, building an original Vademécum formed entirely by books.
Today Laura directs the only bibliotherapy agency that exists in our country, Booklife. “I founded my company in January 2020 after several years of research and training,” he explains. “I did it because I was convinced that the bibliotherapy was a fundamental tool to help people understand us, to accompany us in complex situations, to put words to those things that we feel and especially also to deal with issues that are sometimes difficult to tackle”.
The expert gives an example: “During the pandemic, one of the most read books was The plague by Albert Camus [una novela que se desarrolla en la ciudad argelina de Orán, donde estalla una epidemia de peste bubónica]. People were looking for answers and literature provided them. ”
The Laura Agency offers bibliotherapy services for both groups, through institutions such as the Clinic Hospital in Barcelona, schools, prison or libraries, such as personalized sessions. The process with the latter is as follows: first a process begins in which the bibliotherapist knows her patient, who she is, her vital trajectory and what is happening in her life at that time. With this, the bibliotherapist prepares a reading biography and, from this information, he ‘recipes’ a ‘literary prescription’: a list of about ten or fifteen books aimed to helping him to cope with a certain personal problem or that he can simply enjoy in The future due to its way of being, its hobbies or your tastes.
A discipline of remote origins
She Berthoud and Susan Elderkin, two of the pioneers of modern literature and book authors Literary Remedios Manual (Siruela, 2017), place the first reference to something similar to their specialty in the book Historical Libraryof the Greek historian Diodoro Sicle. In this work, the author recalls his visit to Egypt on the occasion of the celebration, between the 60s and 56 BC, of the 180th Olympiad. In one of the passages, Diodorus describes the city of Thebes, and recounts how, at the entrance of the Sacred Library of the city, there was an inscription in which it could be read: “Refuge of the soul.” That inscription reveals something that perhaps anyone could suspect: that the bibliotherapy, even if it is not practiced by experts nor will it be called that, it is as old as books and even more than these. Probably the stories told orally would have previously had the same effect on people, if not greater.
A proof that we have not changed so much in the last millennia. Human beings tend to identify with what we read, with what they tell us. We cannot avoid it. From the situations or adventures that happen to others we usually get lessons for our own life.
But it was Freud, many centuries later, the first to talk about the importance of identification with the stories of others to help us reflect on our own life. In his psychoanalytic theory he explained that this recognition can generate comfort, give us new perspectives about ourselves and help us overcome complex personal experiences.
Perhaps precisely inspired by Freud’s studies, after World War I, British and North American governments promoted readings programs for soldiers who returned from the front with mental problems. In the United Kingdom, for example, it was Jane Austen’s novels that were used for therapeutic purposes.
After World War I, in the United Kingdom it was Jane Austen’s novels that were used for therapeutic purposes for soldiers
However, the first time there is evidence of the printed term is in a satirical article published in the magazine The Atlantic written in 1916 by Samuel Mcchord Crothers. In it the author says that he has learned of the existence of a new clinic, the Bibliopathic Institute that, under the direction of Dr. Bagster, provides “free treatment administered by competent specialists”.
In an interview that appears later in the same piece, Dr. Bagster declares: “During the last year I have been developing a bibliotherapy system. I do not pay much attention to purely literary or historical classifications. I don’t care if a book is old or modern, whether it is English or German, if it is written in prose or verse, if it is a story or a collection of trials, if it is romantic or realistic. I just wonder: ‘What is your therapeutic value? ”
“Much more than a simple book recommendation”
Olga is a breast cancer patient at the Clinic Hospital in Barcelona, where Laura has been performing a personalized bibliotherapy project for oncological and transplanted patients, among others. “The first day I met Laura entered very discreetly in the room where another lady and I were receiving chemotherapy,” recalls Olga. “In five minutes we had become friends. I explained my story. I opened with her as I had never opened with anyone. She has a great capacity to get and meet the people in front of him. ”
“I had no idea what bibliotherapy was, but it has been a very enriching experience. It is much more than a simple book recommendation, ”he continues. “It has helped me a lot. Laura told me to read The endless story, Ikigai And some other books that connected to what paradise is for me: the Aragonese Pyrenees. Also books related to cancer that helped me understand things that were happening to me. I also recommended to her some that had served me to be proposed to their other patients. ”
“The work of selecting books for therapy never ends,” Laura confesses. “We have almost 70 selected themes with their respective readings and every time we add more. Both of own readings and recommendations of the patients themselves. It is a really very enriching job. ”
Fiction provides us with a certain emotional distance by presenting characters and stories that are not real. It allows us to connect with the plot and the characters without prejudice, reflecting in their experiences and generating a deeper link with the story
Laura García
– Bibliotherapist
Among the books, there are all kinds, although with a focus decided by fiction. “Fiction provides us with a certain emotional distance by presenting characters and stories that are not real,” says the bibliotherapist. “That allows us to connect with the plot and the characters without prejudices, reflecting in their experiences and generating a deeper link with the story.”
Among the most prescribed books in his literacy sessions, Laura quotes THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THOUGHT by Joan Didion, for cases of grief, Invisible and Networks of Eloy Moreno or The rage of Lolita Bosch for cases of bullying, and Married and quiet Emma Zafón or Ways of being far away by Edurne Portela, for women who are suffering or have suffered abuse.
A long way to go
As we said at the beginning of this article, the bibliotherapy is still very little developed in our country. Much less than in Anglo -Saxon countries. However, this is in the process of changing. There are already university degrees in which bibliotherapy studies are being incorporated. For example, the Autonomous University of Madrid, in the subject of Nursing in Mental Health of its nursing degree, dedicates a section to literature. Laura herself confesses that she is working on a project with a university, which will be made public soon, related to literature.
Every time, therefore, we must expect the literature to be something more common in our lives and help more people. Olga, the cancer patient expects this to be. “Medical prescriptions in hospitals are fundamental, but those of another type, such as sports or these, literary, help to be better to manage difficult situations in a much quieter way. Discovering or rediscovering the pleasure of reading, ”he concludes.
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