Autumn invites reading. Schools have started. The air is cooler. The daylight dims, and we all begin spending more time inside, possibly curled up with something to read. Some people love this season, and some do not, but everyone can love the fact that reading is good for our mental health.
Long before there was such a thing as the concept of mental health, there was a library in ancient Greece (the earliest authenticated library, in the second millennium before our era, 1,200 BC) with this inscription over its doors: THE HOUSE OF HEALING FOR THE SOUL.
The idea that reading has healing benefits was given a formal name by a man named Samuel McChord Crothers in 1916. He called it “bibliotherapy”. Sigmund Freud was developing his new theory of psychoanalysis and he used books as part of his therapy practice. Samuel McChord Crothers knew this and wrote an article in The Atlantic Monthly stating that books can be used as medicine when combined with therapy. Bibliotherapy comes from the Greek “billion” which means book and “therapeia” which means healing.
“Books can be used as medicine when combined with therapy”
After WWI soldiers returning home to the United States were often prescribed a course of reading, and in the United Kingdom at the same time Jane Austen’s novels were being used with the veterans for bibliotherapeutic purposes.
Today bibliotherapy is used as a very broad term for the practice of encouraging reading for therapeutic effect. It takes many different forms, from literature courses run for prison inmates, to reading circles for elderly people suffering from dementia, to psychotherapists like myself dispensing reading recommendations with healing value. By and large it is used in conjunction with something else.
I practice Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) and The Work formally, and I use bibliotherapy informally, alongside these two frameworks. I recommend material such as CBT self-help, including a short booklet titled WHO WOULD YOU BE WITH CBT? that I wrote, as well as memoirs, biographies, spiritual texts, and, of course, literature.
I love to read myself and often go to the local public library, walking out with an arm full of books the librarians recommend. Librarians being the original bibliotherapists, and libraries being free, as they are, for all to use. It is no accident that my office is right next to the Kennebunk Public Library, or that I have a shelf in my waiting area where the books are for the taking.
“Reading has the same health benefits of deep relaxation and inner calm”
For those who have been self-medicating with books their entire lives, it may come as no surprise that reading books can be good for your mental health, and your relationships to others, but why and how is becoming clearer with new research.
Firstly, the act of reading, sustained focus and quiet, is healing. Studies have revealed that reading lowers blood pressure, for example. Reading has been shown to put our brains into a pleasurable trance-like state, similar to meditation, and it brings the same health benefits of deep relaxation and inner calm. Regular readers sleep better, have lower stress levels, higher self-esteem, and lower rates of depression.
Also, usually, reading is private (after a certain age). We can read about things we might not be able to talk about yet with a parent, friend or therapist.
“Research has found that people who read fiction tend to better understand and share in the feelings of others”
Plus, we usually only see our therapist once a week for an hour, so reading can also extend the healing throughout more hours of our life.
There is a difference between what we get from reading nonfiction and fiction. Nonfiction teaches, informs, provides facts, educates. Fiction provides something else.
It provides escape and entertainment, but it can also, at the same time, move us emotionally and prompt changes in our sense of self. Fiction is a kind of simulation of ourselves with others. Some studies have demonstrated that literature influences how we relate to people more than other types of books. Research has found that people who read fiction tend to better understand and share in the feelings of others, even those who are very different from themselves.
A 2014 study showed that students in Italy and the UK became more empathetic toward immigrants, refugees and the LGBTQ community after reading HARRY POTTER. The researches concluded that “the world of Harry Potter is characterized by strict social hierarchies and resulting prejudices, with obvious parallels with our society”. For example, people without magical powers are targeted and discriminated against in the books.
“Identification with fictional characters and literary art can improve social abilities”
The neuroscience of empathy became clearer with the discovery of “mirror neurons” – neurons that fire in our brains both when we perform an action ourselves and when we see an action performed by someone else. A study published in the Annual Review of Psychology, based on the analysis of fMRI brain scans of participants, showed that, when people read about an experience, they display stimulation within the same neurological regions as when they go through that experience themselves. Another influential study published in Science found that reading literary fiction improved participants’ results on tests that measured social perception and empathy, which are crucial to “theory of mind”. This is the ability to guess with accuracy what another human being might be thinking or feeling, a skill humans start to develop around the age of four.
So identification with fictional characters and literary art can improve social abilities, it can move us emotionally and change our sense of ourself. Stories then challenge one’s own biases and offer a way to step outside oneself.
“Reading nourishes our need for inner exploration”
This fits well with CBT and The Work, which are methods of healing that recognize suffering comes from accidentally getting stuck in one way of thinking about something or someone, including ourselves, that is distorted, irrational, untrue. With CBT and The Work we are opening our mind to “rewrite” our stressful stories and rewire our perspective.
Reading nourishes our need for inner exploration. It can be a way to experience our inner life in a quiet, deep way. It can be a way to lose all sense of self, while at the same time giving us a feeling of our most unique self.
Jane Austen wrote, when she was only a teenager, “…but for my own part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short.” Luckily, there are libraries, and no shortage of well-written, wise, wonderful things to read.
Vezzali, L., Stathi, S. Giovannini, D. Capozza, D., & Trifiletti, E. (2015). The greatest magic of Harry Potter: Reducing prejudice. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 45, pp. 105-121.
Jane Austen (2006). Juvenilia (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jane Austen – writings from 1787-1793). Peter Sabor, Ed. Cambridge University Press, London, England.
Dr. Robin Barstow is a psychotherapist, writer, speaker, and founder of MINDWELTH, a Holistic Mental Health private practice. Driven by her goal of helping people to suffer less, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is the foundation of her social work. She also practices CBT on herself daily, and that experience informs her understanding of this profound, practical method. Robin Barstow holds a MA from Columbia University, a PhD from Yale University, and LCSW from the University of Maine. She has extensive training and knowledge from working inpatient and outpatient, with both children and adults. Her hobbies include swimming in the sea, knitting and traveling. Read More >>
Robin Barstow, LCSW, MA, PhD
MINDWELTH
207-664-4482
5 Fletcher Street, suite 201, Kennebunk, ME 04043
mindwelth@gmail.com
Website: https://mindwelth.com/
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