Books as Therapy
It is the new year. A time for all of the re’s… rebirth, renewal, resolutions, and of course, reading! Perhaps you are looking at that giant stack of books on your nightstand or coffee table that you swore you were going to read and never got around to. Or maybe you use your Amazon shopping cart like a wishlist, even though you tell people you support local independent bookstores. You start off the year with a goal to read one book per week, or at least one chapter per week, or even one page per week. Or your reading habit exceeds your allotted book budget, and you already read everything of interest in the library. 2024 was a tiring year for many, and maybe you are in need of a break for 2025. Well, we have good news for you! Finally, a valid excuse. Did you know that reading is actually considered a form a therapy? Bibliotherapy: a creative arts therapy that uses storytelling and the reading of books and poetry, using your relationship to the text as therapy.
In 1916, Samuel McChord Crothers, a Unitarian Minister and essayist from Cambridge, Massachusetts, coined the term in an article published in Atlantic Monthly, but the idea is as old as time itself. Egypt’s King Ramses II had the motto “the house of healing for the soul” over the entrance to his library, the oldest known library motto in the world. America’s lesser discussed Founding Father, Dr. Benjamin Rush, was one of the first Americans to recommend literature for hospital patients. His recommendation included two types of reading, one that provides entertainment and one the conveys knowledge. He called for a new job classification to attend to these needs, a “recreational-bibliotherapist”. As did John Minson Galt II, who succeeded his father as superintendent of Williamburg’s Eastern Lunatic Asylum of Virginia, the first mental inpatient facility in colonial America, opened in 1773. Due to Galt’s influence, throughout the mid 1800’s reading was considered the best therapeutic measure for treating mental illness. By the year 1900, every major mental hospital in the United States, and across Europe, had vast libraries for patients.
During World War I, the “science” of bibliotherapy spread to military hospitals, and the Library War Service, established by the American Library Association in 1917, was responsible for stationing librarians overseas to serve soldiers. They raised five million dollars from public donations, and were able to erect 36 camp libraries, distributing 7-10 million books and magazines across 500 locations. Most importantly, to military hospitals. Their efforts led to the permanent creation of library departments in the United States Army, Veteran’s Association, and Merchant Marine. Their greatest effort, the American Library in Paris, created to provide English books to American soldiers in France, is still operating and is the largest English-language lending library in Europe.
When soldiers, doctors, and librarians returned from the war, they implemented bibliotherapy in hospitals stateside. In the 1920s, Western Reserve University and University of Minnesota School of Medicine both offered training programs. Some of the proponents included Edith Kathleen Jones at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts who edited the series Hospital Libraries published in 1923 (and then updated in 1939 and 1953), Sadie Peterson Delaney who took a never-ending leave of absence from the New York Public Library in Harlem (where she developed the first African American collection and also learned Braille to help blind children) to head the library at the VA Hospital in Tuskegee, and Elizabeth Pomeroy who published her research on its effectiveness in 1937 from her work as director of the Veterans Administration Library Service.
In the 1970s, librarian Arleen McCarty Hynes is credited for pioneering modern bibliotherapy at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, DC, the only federal mental hospital. She took the position at the request of her 56-year-old dying husband Emerson, who passed 11 months after their 18-year-old son Michael accidentally drowned in the Potomac, leaving her widowed with 9 living children. Poetry was her preferred pill, highly inspired by Dr. Jack Leedy’s work Poetry Therapy: The Use of Poetry in the Treatment of Emotional Disorders, published in 1969. During her time there she expanded services to over 100 patients out of 4,000 per week, many of whom were felons, alcoholics and addicts, abused women, and homeless, and created lecture series, film screenings, and a library of artwork patients could borrow for their rooms. She founded the Bibliotherapy Round Table (no, it was neither full of vicious lushes nor was it held at the Algonquin Hotel) to host lectures and promote readings. Most interestingly, she completed a 1,000 hour program to become a Registered Poet Therapist, going on to train another who became the first federal Bibliotherapist, the first government job of its kind. Arleen also founded the National Association for Poetry Therapy and the National Federation for Biblio/Poetry Therapy, now known as the International federation for Biblio/Poetry Therapy. She ended up writing her own textbook and creating her own certificate program with psychiatrist Dr. Ken Gorelick. Always a devout Catholic, a decade after her husband’s death, she left the library and entered religious life as a Sister of St. Benedict’s in St. Joseph, Minnesota. And if you just did the math in your head, yes, she completed all of the above in only ten years. Her book Biblio/Poetry Therapy The Interactive Process: A Handbook is currently on its 3rd edition and still in print.
In the 2000s, multiple research studies on bibliotherapy have been conducted proving its effectiveness. One study published in 2010 determined it effective to alleviate depression in aging populations, and another in 2017 established its effectiveness in treating PTSD. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, several trials reinforced its power to reduce stress, anxiety, panic attacks, depression, and maladaptive coping. It has gained a following in substance abuse treatment centers around the world. Even science says reading is good for you!
So the next time your partner looks at your monthly expenses and says to you, “Do you really need another book?”, list it under “Therapy” instead and watch that discernment turn to praise for bettering your mental health. You’re welcome.