The Power of Bibliotherapy: Healing Through Literature

Discover how reading and writing can improve mental well-being and strengthen family bonds during challenging times.

The closure is the beautiful hour of the low-tech. In our house, the stars are the puzzles, the coffee whose folio we grind in a grinder, and of course the books. Usually, we have big eyes and prefer to read everything new and exciting, but now we've had the chance to return to the classics. My husband is reading "The Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov, I'm reading "Valentino" by Natalia Ginzburg, our child has suddenly discovered the charming book about Rosa Parks in the "Big Little Things" series, and our daughter finished "Someone to Run With" by David Grossman. Although she was somewhat forced, she read every word and wrote an impressive paper on it.

When I want to spark a family conversation about the books everyone is reading, I find that my inclinations limit the conversation. I have a clear preference to discuss the content of the book (like the courage of Rosa Parks) or the writing style. But in the back of my mind, I understand that this is not the only thing we can talk about. There are also conversations that can improve the mental state of the household members and strengthen their ability to face the current challenge.

This is why I turned to Ader Primor, former Haaretz foreign affairs editor and director of the English-language television channel i24news, and now a librarian, content editor, and communications lecturer. "I am engaged in a field called bibliotherapy, a type of mental therapy done with the help of reading texts and sometimes also writing," he explains. "In this kind of treatment, the text is a creative tool with which the patients can bring up memories, find characters with whom they identify, and expand their point of view."

"Bibliotherapy treatment does not require skill in reading or writing. The texts are a basis to which the patients refer, and it is a 'safe space' that allows creating new, gentle, and enriching ways to the self or the group. This kind of treatment is suitable for individuals and groups and for almost the entire age range."

Bibliotherapy belongs to the group of arts therapies, also known as Expressive Arts Therapy. The boundaries between them are not rigidly defined, so a "text" can be a book, story, poem, or letter, but it can also be a film, therapeutic cards, and sometimes a drawing.

These days, when we are closed at home with family members, we don't always have the opportunity to provide family members with experiences that are really therapeutic. It's true, says Primor, that literature currently offers itself as bibliotherapy in the classic sense of reading. "Reading is an active act that activates the imagination, intellect, and emotion in a way that suits the readers, whether it is done in printed format, digital format, or as an audiobook."

Still, the therapeutic benefit is not only reserved for the treatment room and the therapist-patient relationship: "The power of a call to become a therapeutic experience is when people succeed in expressing feelings through it, projecting experiences onto fictional heroes, finding ways of coping inspired by their plots, and taking us away from here to other places and landscapes."

How important is parental mediation when it comes to children's reading experiences?

"The parents are the ones who can direct the conversation to the content of the book but also introduce the children to the emotions of the heroes and help them understand what they think and feel in relation to it.

"Fundamentally, humans need an experience of security and control over reality, relying on the ability to predict a sequence of events. This means we use past experience and our thinking schemes, but also rely on the world of imagination and fantasy. However, the current situation confronts us with questions regarding these predictive abilities, resulting in thoughts and anxieties arising because we do not know what lies ahead.

"On this background, the bibliotherapy practice is fertile ground for organizing reality. The text brought into the treatment room is far enough from the person himself that he did not create it, but also close enough to him to use it to process and organize the experiences. In this matter, parental mediation can help: parents have knowledge that children do not yet have, and they can offer interpretations of texts that give children a sense of security."

In your experience, is it possible to have a bibliotherapeutic conversation with children of any age?

"I have taken care of the mentally disabled, the autistic, the elderly, and Holocaust survivors, and I know that the needs, interests, and abilities to read, write, and express vary from person to person. At the same time, there is a broad common denominator for all of them: the desire to improve their lives.

"Bibliotherapy grew out of this exact need and practice. In the beginning, shamans told people myths around the campfire, and later they were replaced by librarians who offered people books to help them deal with various dilemmas, challenges, and difficulties in their lives."

In other words, despite the fact that mental therapy requires a therapist to reflect, attack, and mediate between the text and the patients, bibliotherapy gives the patients a broader context of thinking about life and the experiences a person goes through in his life through literary texts. "This is the point of view of bibliotherapy during therapy," he says, "but it is available to any reader who wishes to open himself to it or at least is willing to try it."

In this context, Primor talks about the therapeutic work of Tali Schvalb, a certified bibliotherapist and psychotherapist. The treatment was done in an elementary school at the beginning of the corona crisis when it was still a "fresh" and unknown epidemic, raising doubts about our abilities to assess the situation. "She told me that the children expressed their overwhelming feelings by describing the threat through artistic means," explains Primor, "and when they gave this thing a real form, they made it tangible.

"Illustrating the threat allowed them to talk about concrete and not ethereal fear, turning it into the subject of a story and a journey of overcoming and victory. The process of writing the story led each child to describe the threat according to their personal style and inner world, and they also offered solutions for safe driving within the conditions."

Writing, just like reading, is a classic therapeutic tool known to therapists of various schools. Personally, I do not feel that writing is therapeutic per se, and for me, it is an outcome of the writing process and not its purpose. That's why I asked Primor to expand on how writing for the soul can help us and our family members these days. "The changes in the labor market following the freezing of the economy and the lockdown have raised questions and anxieties among the newly unemployed. They are not alone; even those who continued to work remotely now face challenges that this type of work poses. Everyone is faced with questions about availability, meeting needs, and deadlines, creating a lot of tension, especially for people who have trouble setting clear boundaries and being assertive."

Primor gives another example from Tali Schwalb, who told him she recently met a patient in a senior position at her workplace. Her lack of assertiveness met a demanding reality accompanied by an ever-greater threat of dismissal, creating great distress. Schwalb encouraged her to write down her sweetest fantasy regarding working conditions and hours that would be adapted to her and acceptable to her.

"The very act of writing allowed her to conduct internal negotiations and make contact with parts of herself that are afraid of angering and being angry at the many tasks she is asked to complete with unreasonable deadlines," he explains. "Agreeing to write things down, using her imagination and fantasy to fulfill her needs and desires, helped her organize her demands and turn them into something that could be discussed in a concrete and real way.

"It became clear to her that the threat she experienced was more internal than external, and she realized it was not necessarily anchored in reality. After coming to this understanding, she dared to send a request to limit working hours and organize more comfortable working conditions for her. This means that her text was an organizing space that gave an external echo to an internal experience of fear and anxiety that arises when she is required to protect herself."

What criteria should we use when deciding what to read these days?

"The answer to that is 'a good book that suits the reader.' Reading a book is a personal and intimate encounter with a text, the meanings of which change from one reader to another and even at different moments in the same person's life. Even 'difficult' books can be excellent friends, and this may be even more true in times of crisis."

For anyone interested in this method and literature in general, Primor highly recommends "Another Endeavor" by Dana Hefetz, a bibliotherapist and philosophy lecturer, recently published by Pardes. "The book contains a collection of wonderful stories in which Hefetz describes what happens in bibliotherapy treatment," he says.

Primor summarizes the conversation and clarifies his answer regarding the choice of the book using Israel Eliraz's beautiful poem:

"A book falls into your hands. You read it and cry. [...]

You let the book stand in front of you,

Naked movement you haven't done in many months, meets

Next to her are beloved people, bright, as if someone

Beautiful and generous, he passed a golden look over their faces.

You place a finger on the lips of the book,

that now you can no longer lift, and in silence

The final one, the ant, who can only hear it

Whose ears are inclined to the thread of the hair of Sabal, you say

To him, in friendship, what you haven't said to anyone for a long time:

Wait for me here, at the end, I'll be right back"

(From the book "Edge Kesha," Kibbutz Ha'Hauched, 1989)