Carl Jung & Memory simple breakdown of levels

The psychologist and philosopher Carl Jung saw memorization as an active process that he divided into five distinct levels (Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1967). The farther you go along his continuum, the easier it is to learn.

FIRST LEVEL: SENSORY ~ This is the most basic of the five levels, encompassing what you see and hear. If you walk into a classroom, sit down, spend the class daydreaming, or staring out the window, and then leave, you will probably have a tough time remembering. But if you engage your senses, use your eyes and ears, and get involved with the lecture and discussion, you have mastered this step.

SECOND LEVEL: MEMORIZATION ~ Repetition. It’s how we learn our new phone number or zip code. It’s how most of us learned material in grade school, junior high and high school. While you’ll still use this skill in college, you may find that it plays a smaller role in overall learning.

THIRD LEVEL: ANALYSIS ~ This is the level where real learning begins. You are starting to integrate new material with what you have learned previously. This is active learning, not passive memorization.

FOURTH LEVEL: JUDGMENT ~ Your opinion is the key here. Once you form an opinion on something you tend to learn it better and remember it longer. To form an opinion, you need to be an active learner (see Level Three), and you need to be willing to ask questions and be receptive to the ideas of others.

FIFTH LEVEL: INTUITION ~ This is the ultimate level, where learning becomes connected to your experience. This is the stage where you begin to make connections between things you learn in one class, and things you learn in another. You begin to see that everything connects, in some way. You begin to see the way “the big picture” looks! You have to work toward this level, but the reward is a lifelong appreciation of the very process of seeking knowledge.

(created by S.Crawford)

Excellent study being done in Sri Lanka on bibliotherapy

 Introducing Bibliotherapy in Public Libraries for the Development of Health and Social Conditions of Post War Community in Jaffna District- An Exploratory Study « IFLA Reference and Information Services Blog 

Project Itoh's HARMONY

P. 128

...the mesencephalon, the midbrain, ...is the part that governs the feedback system in our brains...it processes the signals that motivate us to do things. Every action, no matter how small, has its associated reward...a range of feedback...that inspiresvus to repeat certain choices...creat(ing) a vast variety of motivating desire modules that compete for our attention. We call the act of choosing between these our will. ... Think of the desire modules we all carry around as the people in (a) meeting, trying to get their opinions heard. (Human will is not an all-discerning soul but rather the heated debate.) It's the process...of all your desires clamoring for attention... if the reward associated with a particular desire is slight, it reduces our will to act on that desire... it's the differences in reward levels that change our will, and it's all mapped out.

Thomas M. Disch's CAMP CONCENTRATION

P. 12

Genius...is an infinite capacity for taking pains.

P. 58

...genius is simply the bringing together of two hitherto distinct spheres of reference, or matrices--a talent for juxtapositions.

P. 59

The mind defends itself against the disintegrative process of creativity...if genius doesn't reign itself in...common people take action...we put all our geniuses in one kind or another of isolation ward, to escape being infected.

CENTO poems

Cento (poetry) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Perfect for bibliotherapy!
Who knew there was a name for it? I have been doing it spontaneously...
It encourages digestion of ideas.

Bibliotherapy in Counseling Practice (powerpoint)

Bibliotherapy in Counseling Practice: Training Lecture

BIBLIOTHERAPY, OR, CONSTRUCTING A LIFE OUT OF BOOKS

“One sheds one’s sicknesses in books —repeats and presents again one’s emotions, to be master of them.”
—D.H. Lawrence (The Letters of D.H Lawrence)
The idea that literature can provide solace, that it can help to ‘master’ the bleak places of the head and the heart and banish some of their wearying shadows, is nothing new: Plato believed that the arts were given to us by the muses to help us find harmony within ourselves, like a sort of handy creative auto-tune, and it is common enough to hear that someone’s grief was made a little bit more bearable by reading Tennyson, or that Meredith’s Modern Love offered solidarity in the middle of a divorce. The NHS have recently taken steps to solidify this notion, elevating it from a vague semi-universal truth to an almost medicinal level: bibliotherapy, the provision of services that quite literally prescribe certain literary works to patients suffering from afflictions like anxiety, stress and depression, has become increasingly ubiquitous, with almost every local healthcare authority in the UK now running versions. The schemes are, on the whole, experiencing a positive response, with most studies concluding that bibliotherapy is at least as effective as more acceptable modes of treating depression. Literature, then – or, more accurately, emotional engagement with literature – can clearly have a powerful effect on our mental health.

So far, so obvious; but if literature can strengthen our mental state and alter long-ingrained mental markings, the question really ought to be considered the other way round: does the literature we immerse ourselves in, particularly in our formative years, have the power to influence the way our patterns of behaviour and personalities actually form? Nick Hornby famously asked in High Fidelity “which came first, the music or the misery?” and this can be applied with just as much relevance to literature. Do we choose to read the things we do because we’re miserable (or argumentative, or content, or anything) or are we more likely to be these things because of what we have read? It is important here to clarify that by ‘reading’ I’m not talking about the huge variety of material that we casually consume every day, but the texts that we really engage with and invest in.
Being university educated in particular means you are likely to be surrounded by people whose heads are bursting with all the different representations of a human life that they have absorbed over the previous twenty-whatever years of their own lives, with the ones that have resonated the most remaining scored deeply into their minds. The echoes of this are unconscious, and leave an imprint on us as invisible and integral as our subconscious lives: even my own phrasing here echoes that of a book I loved intensely in my teenage years, Grassic Gibbon’s Sunset Song, with its talk of its protagonist’s first sexual fever as something that “scored her mind as a long drill scored the crumbling sods of a brown, still May,” an image that has embedded itself into my mind at some unobserved level and forever altered my perception of the verb “score.” Part of the reason for this could be that before we reach adulthood and have a fighting chance of actually experiencing something of the world, the most exciting emotional experiences offered to us are more likely to come from within the pages of a novel than the minutiae of a school day. This isn’t to say that the events of our actual

lives aren’t the key factors in our emotional development, but more that the sheer excitement of literary examples can shape the way you deal with the things that really do happen to you: I’ve never buried an unbaptized illegitimate child in my back garden or lost the man I loved to Brazil and then a murder charge, but when I was sixteen the hours I spent sobbing into Tess of the D’Ubervilles were directly proportionate to the time spent doing the same over boys I kissed fuelled by Caribbean Twist in other people’s parents’ houses who never texted me back.
Literature has long been charged with the ability to corrupt, usually to do with – as Lady Chatterley’s Lover and copious others illustrate – sex or death. In the 18^th century, this is best evidenced by the way the phenomenon of ‘Wertherism’ seized the public imagination in a thoroughly contagious manner:  Goethe’s 1774 novel The Sorrows of Young Werther became a veritable craze, and according to Eric Lane in his introduction to the text its popularity soon “led to a Europe full of young men wearing blue coats and yellow breeches and suffering from melancholy,” a delicious image that indicates both the glamour and the ubiquity of the trend. ‘Wertherism’ held a nigh-on hypnotic appeal for both men and women, as although Werther himself is a young man, the object of his suicidal affections, Charlotte, is never given a voice, meaning women could identify with the melancholy of the protagonist without the constraints of gender.
The Werther phenomenon has often been blamed for provoking a spate of suicide attempts, and although this too simplistic, the sheer popularity of the novel did allow its legions of readers to see that their mental disquiet was not as unique or as bizarre as they had previously thought, and provided them with a method of expression. This is something that has occurred time and time again, in varying modes, but the level at which people engage is the same: the feeling of seeing the way you feel spelled out in linguistic fireworks takes hold of both your mind and your heart in the same utterance. The popularity of The Smiths in the 1980’s made being lovelorn and lonely and a little strange more acceptable, just as the phenomenon of The Sorrows of Young Werther did, and people fell in love with lyrics like “Is it wrong not to always be glad? No, it’s not wrong – but I must add: How can someone so young sing words so sad?” in the same way people had with Goethe’s effusive prose two hundred years later.
The idea that the emotional effects of text on a reader can be used to ascertain the true value of a poem or a novel was challenged with Wimsatt and Beardsley’s ‘Affective Fallacy,’ but inverted it can be used to explain some aspects at least of the choices people make and the behavioural patterns they exhibit. Particular traits accumulate over the years and are most often picked up from those around us, whether our parents or our peers, but an early infatuation with Sylvia Plath could certainly cultivate a tendency towards introspection just as an obsession with Jack Kerouac could entice someone towards a nomadic lifestyle rather than a desire to settle down.
I grew up fascinated by books and plays and poems that revolved around female characters who could be categorised, reductively but tellingly, as ‘strong and difficult women,’ from the obligatory pre-teen identification with Hermione Granger (such an irritatingly smug demeanor! Such terrible hair!) to a pseudo-academic obsession with Charlotte Brontë: for a while, I think I genuinely believed in my heart of hearts that I was the modern day equivalent of Jane Eyre. Most significantly, I fell in love at around about the age of fourteen with Beatrice, the  indisputable heroine of Much Ado About Nothing, by way of the 1993 film (thanks for that, Emma Thompson) and somewhere along the line my affection for “dear Lady Disdain” developed into a deeply-rooted belief in the association between strength, attraction and argumentativeness. Even now, several years and many, many more library fines later, my immediate reaction to any situation in which I feel vulnerable – whether it’s meeting new people, intimidating social events or romantic relationships – is an argumentativeness that doesn’t even do a particularly god job of walking the tenuous tightrope between ‘stimulating’ and ‘abrasive.’
Yes, reading is a mental rather than physical event, but most of us spend far more time in our heads than anywhere else. As Lawrence wrote and as ‘bibliotherapy’ hopes, we can indeed “shed [our] sicknesses in books,” but the relationship between what we read and what we feel is more complex than that. Perhaps literature is not just important in efforts to improve our mental state, as the ‘reading cure,’ but can prove integral in laying the foundations of its construction in the first place.
by

Helen Charman 19 February 2013 in The Inkling

Don't pop a pill, read a book

http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life/dont-pop-a-pill-read-a-book-20130226-2f2ph.html
Everyone knows that curling up with a good novel is relaxing but what if reading can do more than just boost your mood? Experts believe reading can transform lives, helping people deal with a variety of psychological and emotional problems, from stress and anxiety to grief and depression.
Using books as therapy or bibliotherapy as it is known, is not a new idea. Sigmund Freud used literature during psychoanalysis sessions with his patients and books were used to help soldiers recovering from physical and emotional trauma following the First and Second World Wars.
Now reading as therapy is set to enjoy a resurgence. In May, a new pilot program, Books on Prescription, will launch in libraries across the Central West area of New South Wales. Under the scheme, funded by a $71,000 library development grant, GPs and other health professionals will be able to recommend self-help books on prescription from around 14 public libraries for people dealing with a variety of psychological issues.

The Secret Garden

"Books on Prescription is a highly effective way of helping people with common mental health problems such as anxiety, depression, phobias and eating disorders" says Jan Richards, Central West libraries manager in Orange. "There is first class clinical evidence to show that books can be just as effective as other forms of therapy."

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Richards says the concept for the scheme came from the UK's Books on Prescription program where doctors can prescribe self-help books or mood-boosting works of literature to treat those suffering from mild to moderate mental illness. She hopes the Central West's Books on Prescription scheme "will complement traditional medicine and that in partnership with the medical community we'll be able to provide positive health outcomes."
UK research has found that reading is more relaxing than listening to music, going for a walk or having a cup of tea, reducing stress levels by 68 per cent. Cognitive neuropsychologist Dr David Lewis from the consultancy Mindlab International found that reading silently for just six minutes, slowed the heart rate and eased muscle tension in research volunteers.

Salvation Creek: An Unexpected Life

In Victoria, Susan McLaine, project coordinator at the State Library of Victoria, has been developing the State Library's Book Well program since 2010. She says that whilst there are similar Books on Prescription schemes at different stages of development in Australia there is no state-wide or national model.
Inspired by the UK's successful Get Into Reading program, the Victorian Book Well scheme uses literature in the form of fiction, inspirational stories and poetry within read-aloud reading groups to improve health and wellbeing. "I think bibliotherapy development using imaginative literature shows great therapeutic potential," says McLaine who is also a PhD candidate in the study of bibliotherapy. The aim, she explains, "is to assist people to think about more creative ways to solve personal problems, through reading about how fictional characters similar to them faced problems and resolved them. These characters often seem to speak directly to us; keeping us company, reminding us we are not the only one feeling this way and at times offering us hope."
Associate professor Vijaya Manicavasagar, director of psychological services at the Black Dog Institute, agrees that prescribing reading in mild cases of depression "if it is part of a concerted effort to lift someone's mood, is a terrific idea."

Overcoming Panic

Her own book, Overcoming Panic and Agoraphobia, is one of the books recommended on the UK's list of Books on Prescription.
"It would be wonderful to see a nationwide initiative" she says. Reading literature can give "a new perspective on life and problems that you might be encountering so you get to see how other people might have dealt with a similar problem or coped with a particular situation so it exposes you to new ways of thinking, a bit like cognitive therapy. As well as pure escapism, the experience of identifying with a character who comes through adversity may also build self-confidence."
Manicavasagar believes books can help a person de-stress by changing their emotional state. "You might start reading a book feeling quite strung out and anxious but if you really get into it you are transported to a different emotional state which is usually better than the one you started off with," she explains.
But, she stresses, "if you have got a serious psychiatric disorder like a major depression where your concentration is impaired and where you are finding it difficult to follow things or you have a psychotic illness for example, then of course prescribing reading is not going to be all that helpful."
For those dealing with the loss of loved ones Manicavasagar recommends Salvation Creek: An Unexpected Life by Susan Duncan. "It is a about dealing with grief — which in the case of the author has to do with the deaths of her brother and husband. I think it is an uplifting book which could be helpful for people dealing with major life changes."
(by Sandy Smith from the Sydney Morning Herald)

BIBLIOTHERAPY and. CHOICE THEORY to assist At-Risk. Girls

https://www.runmyclub.com/VSCA/ClientFiles/Documents/F608%20Bibliotherapy%20and%20Choice%20Theory_03252013-100330PM.pdf

What to read? Bibliotherapy

The history of bibliotherapy

Photo by Shelley Rodrigo.

Over the past weeks I’ve been looking at how reading can be a means of pleasure, education, and self-development. But I also happen to believe – and I’m not the only one, not by a long shot – that a relationship with books can increase wellbeing. The right book at the right time can be a powerful thing, not just amusing and teaching, but also reassuring and even healing. Indeed, an ancient Greek library at Thebes bore an inscription on the lintel naming it a “Healing-Place for the Soul.”
The term “bibliotherapy,” from the Greek biblion (books) + therapeia (healing), was coined in 1916 by Samuel McChord Crothers (1857-1927). Crothers, a Unitarian minister and essayist, introduced the word in an Atlantic Monthly piece called “A Literary Clinic.” The use of books as a therapeutic tool then came to the forefront in America during the two world wars, when librarians received training in how to suggest helpful books to veterans recuperating in military hospitals. Massachusetts General Hospital had founded one of the first patients’ libraries, in 1844, and many other state institutions – particularly mental hospitals – had followed suit by the time of the First World War. Belief in the healing powers of reading was becoming more widespread; whereas once it had been assumed that only religious texts could edify, now it was clear that there could be benefits to secular reading too.

Read this for what ails you
Clinical bibliotherapy is still a popular strategy, often used in combination with other medical approaches to treat mental illness. Especially in the UK, where bibliotherapy is offered through official National Health Service (NHS) channels, library and health services work together to give readers access to books that may aid the healing process. Over half of England’s public library systems offer bibliotherapy programs, with a total of around 80 schemes documented as of 2006. NHS doctors will often write patients a ‘prescription’ for a recommended book to borrow at a local library. These books will usually fall under the umbrella of “self-help,” with a medical or mental health leaning: guides to overcoming depression, building self-confidence, dealing with stress, and so on.

Books: a matter for the health service.

Books can serve as one component of cognitive behavioral therapy, which aims to modify behavior through the identification of irrational thoughts and emotions. Bibliotherapy has also been shown to be an effective method of helping children and teenagers cope with problems: everything from parents’ divorce to the difficulties of growing up and resisting peer pressure. Overall, bibliotherapy is an appealing strategy for medical professionals to use with patients because it is low-cost and low-risk but disproportionately effective.
In addition to clinical bibliotherapy, libraries also support what is known as “creative bibliotherapy” – mining fiction and poetry for their healing powers. Library pamphlets and displays advertise their bibliotherapy services under names such as “Read Yourself Well” or “Reading and You,” with eclectic, unpredictable lists of those novels and poems that have proved to be inspiring or consoling. With all of these initiatives, the message is clear: books have the power to change lives by reminding ordinary, fragile people that they are not alone in their struggles.

The School of Life

Photo by jmage.

The School of Life is pop philosopher Alain de Botton’s brainchild, a London hub where trendy, angsty types can come to learn tactics for how to live well. Classes, psychotherapy sessions, secular ‘sermons,’ and a library of recommended reading tackle subjects such as job satisfaction, creativity, parenting, ethics, finances, and facing death with dignity. In addition, the School offers bibliotherapy sessions (one-on-one, for adults or children, or, alternatively, for couples) that can take place in person or online.

School of Life founder Alain de Botton (Photo attribution: Barry Carlyon and Danielle Tanton)

A prospective reader fills out a reading history questionnaire before meeting the bibliotherapist, and can expect to walk away from the session with one instant book prescription. A full prescription of another 5-10 books arrives within a few days.
In 2011 The Guardian sent six of its writers on School of Life bibliotherapy sessions; their consensus seemed to be that, although the sessions produced some intriguing book recommendations, at £80 (or $123) each they were an unnecessarily expensive way of deciding what to read next – especially compared to asking a friend or skimming newspapers’ reviews of new books. Nonetheless, it is good to see bibliotherapy being taken seriously in a modern, non-medical context.

A consoling canon


You don’t need a doctor’s or bibliotherapist’s prescription to convince you that reading makes you feel better. It cheers you up, makes you take yourself less seriously, and gives you a peaceful space for thought. Even if there is no prospect of changing your situation, getting lost in a book at least allows you to temporarily forget your woes. In Comfort Found in Good Old Books (1911), a touching work he began writing just 10 days after his son’s sudden death, George Hamlin Fitch declared “it has been my constant aim to preach the doctrine of the importance of cultivating the habit of reading good books, as the chief resource in time of trouble and sickness.”
Indeed, as Rick Gekoski noted last year in an article entitled “Some of my worst friends are books,” literary types have always turned to reading to help them through grief. He cites the examples of Joan Didion coming to grips with her husband’s death in The Year of Magical Thinking, or John Sutherland facing up to his alcoholism in The Boy Who Loved Books. Gekoski admits to being “struck and surprised, both envious and a little chagrined, by how literary their frame of reference is. In the midst of the crisis…a major reflex is to turn, for consolation and understanding, to favorite and esteemed authors.” Literary critic Harold Bloom confirms that books can provide comfort; in The Western Canon he especially recommends William Wordsworth, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson as “great poets one can read when one is exhausted or even distraught, because in the best sense they console.”


Just as in a lifetime of reading you will develop your own set of personal classics, you are also likely to build up a canon of favorite books to consult in a crisis – books that you turn to again and again for hope, reassurance, or just some good laughs. For instance, in More Book Lust Nancy Pearl swears by Bill Bryson’s good-natured 1995 travel book about England, Notes from a Small Island: “This is the single best book I know of to give someone who is depressed, or in the hospital.” (With one caveat: beware, your hospitalized reader may well suffer a rupture or burst stitches from laughing.)

Just what you needed
There’s something magical about that serendipitous moment when a reader comes across just the right book at just the right time. Charlie D’Ambrosio confides that he approaches books with a quiet wish: “I hope in my secret heart someone, somewhere, mysteriously influenced and moved, has written exactly what I need” (his essay “Stray Influences” is collected in The Most Wonderful Books). Yet this is not the same as superstitiously expecting to open a book and find personalized advice. Believe it or not, this has been an accepted practice at various points in history. “Bibliomancy” means consulting a book at random to find prophetic help – usually the Bible, as in the case of St. Augustine and St. Francis of Assisi. St. Francis’s first biographer, Thomas of Celano, wrote that “he humbly prayed that he might be shown, at his first opening the book, what would be most fitting for him to do” (in his First Life of St Francis of Assisi).

The outdoor sale lot and literary mural at Brattle Book Shop in Boston.

Perhaps meeting the right book is less like a logical formula and more like falling in love. You can’t really explain how it happened, but there’s no denying that it’s a perfect match. Nick Hornby likens this affair of the mind to a dietary prescription – echoing that medical tone bibliotherapy can often have: “sometimes your mind knows what it needs, just as your body knows when it’s time for some iron, or some protein” (in More Baths, Less Talking).
Entirely by happenstance, a book that has recently meant a lot to me is one of the six inaugural School of Life titles, How to Stay Sane by psychotherapist Philippa Perry. Clearly and practically written, with helpful advice on how to develop wellbeing through self-observation, healthy relationships, optimism, and exercise, Perry’s book turned out to offer just what I needed.


If you’re having trouble choosing your next read and would like some help from a literary dietician or matchmaker – otherwise known as a bibliotherapist – we’d love to hear from you on our “Help Me, Bookkaholic!” page. Let us know what you’re looking for, and one of us amateurs will try our hand at bibliotherapy. Or head over and try one of the books reviewed in our “What Should I Read Next” column.

Next time: Sometimes reading really depressing books can be good for you. From Aristotle’s classic theory of catharsis to the modern misery memoir, I look at how encountering literary tragedy can actually be uplifting.

[For a helpful historical survey of bibliotherapy, see the following articles: “

Alain de Botton Aristotle bibliotherapy Bill Bryson catharsis Charlie D’Ambrosio Emily Dickinson George Hamlin Fitch Harold Bloom Joan Didion John Sutherland nancy pearl Nick Hornby Philippa Perry Rick Gekoski Samuel McChord Crothers St. Augustine St. Francis of Assisi Thomas of Celano tragedy Walt Whitman William Wordsworth

 

 written by

Rebecca Foster

 

An American in London, library assistant by day, and lover of all things bookish. I'm also a literature programming team volunteer and guest blogger for Greenbelt arts festival, and a reviewer for We Love This Book's website.

 

Bibliotherapy: tracing the roots of a moral therapy movement in the United States from the early nineteenth century to the present

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3634391/

Becoming the Characters You Read

http://brainblogger.com/2012/06/09/lose-yourself-becoming-the-characters-you-read/
As a lover of books, I believe that you cannot open a book — any book — without learning something. New research now shows that, in addition to just learning about other people, places, and things, readers actually take on the experiences and beliefs of the characters in books.
In a study published by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers at Ohio State University report the results of six experiments that tested the degree to which people found themselves feeling the emotions, thoughts, behaviors, goals, and traits of the characters in fictional stories. Overall, the authors report that this phenomenon, called “experience-taking,” can lead to real changes in the lives of the readers, albeit temporary.
The first three experiments demonstrated that people must be able to let go of their own identity while reading in order to undergo significant experience-taking. For example, readers who read in a cubicle with a mirror were less likely to take on the identity of the fictional characters. The second three experiments evaluated the characteristics of the writing that allowed for more or less experience-taking.
One experiment involved 82 undergraduate students who were asked to read a short story about a student who overcame obstacles to vote. Several versions of the story — written in first-person and written in third-person, and featuring a student at the same university as the participants and featuring a different university — were read among the group. After reading, the readers completed a questionnaire about how much they adopted the perspective of the character. The researchers also tracked whether or not the students voted in the November 2008 Presidential election, which took place only a few days after the experiment.
Students who read the story in first-person about a student at their own university showed the highest level of experience-taking, and 65% of these students reported voting on Election Day. Only 29% of students who read a first-person account from a different university reported voting.
Another experiment involved 70 heterosexual college students who read a day-in-the-life story of another student. There were three distinct versions of the story: one in which the student was revealed as homosexual early in the story, one in which his homosexuality was revealed late, and one in which the student was heterosexual. Students reported more experience-taking when the homosexuality was not revealed until late in the story, compared to when the homosexuality was revealed early. Also, readers of the late-reveal version expressed more favorable, and less judgmental, attitudes toward homosexuals after reading the story than readers of the other two versions. A similar experiment was conducted, with similar results, using versions of a story in which a student was revealed to be African American early or late in the narrative that were read by non-African American students.
Overall, the authors concluded that a reader can immerse himself in a book when he can identify with the character and forget about his own identity. The changes in self-judgment, attitude, and behavior that accompany this immersion into a character’s life can lead to real-world changes or actions, but the duration of effect is not clear.
People acquire knowledge from books, and the knowledge and perspective gained from fictional narratives may be true or false, depending on the story. Readers learn more than what is simply stated in black and white on a page; they use references to the real world — and their own lives — to integrate the story into their own knowledge base. The true worth of a book is measured by what a reader takes away from it.
So many books, so little time.
References
Butler AC, Dennis NA, & Marsh EJ (2012). Inferring facts from fiction: Reading correct and incorrect information affects memory for related information. Memory (Hove, England) PMID: 22640369
Kaufman GF, & Libby LK (2012). Changing Beliefs and Behavior Through Experience-Taking. Journal of personality and social psychology PMID: 22448888

Reading through Depression

http://www.mind.org.uk/blog/6743_bibliotherapy_reading_through_depression
It’s World Book Night tonight. Last year I dashed round the hospital I work in, giving out free books to harassed shift workers on a Saturday night. This year I’ve been lucky enough to be selected again and will give out fiction to local cinema goers.
I love the idea of promoting reading. For me fiction has been a life line for my mental health from an early age. I come from a family of voracious readers and we were always encouraged to read. Often the four of us would be in disparate corners of the house immersed in books and the house was always full of novels.
For me, fiction provided an insight into the minds of others and it was a revelation for me that I wasn’t the only one suffering from anguish and distress. As a child, I tended to be apprehensive and worried, experiencing anxiety at things others considered common place or mundane. As I grew older my anxiety increased and I graduated to being a messed up teenager with a penchant for sleeping, occasional substance abuse and prolonged dark moods. I first experienced a bout of depression in my mid teens and reading was my coping mechanism.
I started to experience searing anxiety and disturbing thoughts about how bleak life felt. I withdrew, lost my confidence and couldn’t socialise as I usually had. The only time I felt I could lose myself was in a good book. I’d read compulsively, devouring book after book, to distract myself from feeling so worried and negative. I’d emerge every so often to go to the library and get more books. It felt like reading helped me through by allowing me to relax and be somewhere else.
An added dimension for me was that reading fiction allowed me to see inside other people’s heads. A well written novel conveys the world from a different perspective. It’s like seeing through the eyes of another person. What I found (and still often find) is that this taught me that my experiences weren’t uncommon.
I gained comfort from reading about other people’s emotional struggles. I discovered that fictional characters can experience random anxiety which rips them apart, searing depression which puts them under the covers in their beds and mental unease which they struggle through. It felt inclusive for me to discover that maybe my experiences were more universal than I first thought. I also found that, often, books which depict depression or anxiety well are written by those who’ve experienced it themselves too.
I went on to suffer more severe depression and anxiety in later life and at times lost the ability to experience much pleasure. If I lose interest in reading that’s always a bad sign for me and an indicator that I need to stop and scrutinise what’s going on and think about relapse prevention. During bleak episodes of depression I would see a return to reading as a sign things were looking up.
I’m a keen advocator of reading fiction, whether it’s brutally real or totally escapist. It definitely has a therapeutic effect for me.

From Pain to Poetry

http://www.mind.org.uk/blog/8753_from_pain_to_poetry
‘Writing helps you to confront who you really are’
This statement was brought to my attention at a workshop I attended and it resonated with me for many reasons, one of them was because I’d just started writing a blog, I had no idea what it would become but it became very cathartic.
I’d always written the odd piece of poetry, but I didn’t think anything of it other than it being an explosion of my feelings in words.
When I started to write my blog, the idea was to help me release some of the thoughts and feelings I was experiencing, hence its name ‘Free Your Mind – Pain to poetry’.
I hoped it may help other people feeling the same way, but also to help those around me to understand me better, and in a way help me to really search and explore myself from the inside out.
I spent a few weeks updating my blog before I had an incident with a close friend where I could sense a feeling of 'just snap out of it’, that I was playing the victim to my feelings coming from them. After another horrid panic attack, I decided I had enough of being misunderstood and that they needed to understand just what I was going through, the struggles I was having with my feelings, every day the darkness I was in. I wanted their understanding not pity.
I emailed a link to my blog to all of friends and family, hoping they would read it and finally understand, I was overwhelmed by the support I received messages telling me how brave I was, how well I’d hidden so much, another friend told me she’d cried reading it because she really had no idea that things were as bad as they were.
True to the symptoms of anxiety I started to feel unworthy of the praise Id received, why was I getting praise for this? I didn’t feel deserving of it, all I was doing was writing a blog, but what I didn’t realise was that I was putting myself out there, facing up to my issues and starting on my road to healing. I say healing and not recovery, because I don’t think you ever fully recover from a mental health problem but you do learn how to cope. 
At this particular workshop, it hit home exactly what my blog and writing had done for me. I had always loved reading and writing, my degree was in communications, culture and media. However In 2008 I was told by an old boss that my writing skills were poor, and then diagnosed with dyslexia, my confidence was shot to pieces and so I lost all interest in reading and writing altogether
By 2012 after several life altering incidents, I had become a serious bottler of my feelings and emotions and mastered the art of faking a smile every day. To most I was happy and smiley but alone I’d cry every morning, upset that I’d woken up to another day of my life and cry myself to sleep at night after spending the day over thinking everything, questioning my existence and hating myself. By January 2013 I had lost all sense of purpose and contemplated suicide daily.
This brings me back to the statement that ‘Writing helps you to confront who you are’, I’ve always hated confrontation and realised that I always expressed myself best in written form. I didn’t know it at the time, but through starting my blog I had started to open up again, confront my feelings or at least began to express them and began to explore and understand the situations in my life that had made me predisposed to the depression, panic and anxiety disorder that I have. From the past to the present, it made me realise just how long I had to go, but also how far I had come.
I’d recommend writing to anyone having trouble expressing their feelings, please feel free to contact me at my blog for anything x
Natasha
Read Natasha's blog From pain to poetry

Robert J. Sawyer's THE TERMINAL EXPERIMENT

Life after death, life without bodily desire, as modeled by computer simulation, but what are the moral implications. Sawyer always raises compelling questions and has the science to support his theories.

Quote p68: Wilder Penfield who did work on directly stimulating the brain...found it easy to elicit vivid memories of long forgotten things.

Neural nets firing, flooding the brain with images and endorphins as a result of anoxia explains sense of peace.

P86

5 models for senescence and death:

1. Stochastic theory--bodies as machines that break down

2. Hayflick phenomenon--human cells only divide 50 times

3. Smudged Xerox hypothesis--DNA introduces errors every time its copied

4. Toxic Waste Theory--aka Free radicals are at fault

5. Autoimmune hypothesis--our cells become confused and attack themselves

P101

The soulwave discovered leaving the body at point of death raised imolications for inutero and is discovered in 9 or 10th week of pregnancy, providing justification for early term abortion.

P116

Without our memories, our pasts, what we were, it wouldn't be anything we'd recognize as a continuation of the same person.

P202

"Humor is the response to the sudden formation of unexpected neural nets."

Laughter is the response that goes along with new connections forming in the brain, with synapses firing in ways they've never fired before...

When the joke wears thin, the neural net has been established.

P255

Lawrence Kohlberg

Interesting interactive tools

 A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods 

Still Alice

By ivy league neuroscientist Lisa Genova is a novel about loss, aging, letting go, in the context on a psycholinguist with early onset alzheimers.

Informative: Stroop, Raven's Colored Progressive Matrices, Luria Mental Rotation, Boston Naming, WAIS-- Picture Arrangement, Benton Visual Arrangement, NYU-Story Recall...tests for diagnosing and charting dementia.

Brains of Alzheimer's patients had reduced levels of acetycholine...and the hippocampus, critical for the formation of new menories became mired in plaques and tangles...anomia a pathological slip of the tongue was a symptom

Affects parietal lobes early on (where we keep our internal sense of extra personal space representations

Creative writing teacher blogs about

 Reading for Writers 

Online Book Review magazine

 In The Skin Of A Lion: The Perfect Book to Read in March - Bookkaholic 

Since Bookkaholic has a nice ReadersAnonymous ring to it and may aid in finding new reading matter, check out this review on one of my favorite authors (search this site for Ondatjee) as representative.

Display Readers' Advisory

 New self help book list launches at Bandon Library | SouthernStar | News 

But is it bibliotherapy?

Bibiotherapy does not have to involve books?

 On Bibliotherapy and Sabr | A Muslimah Writes about narrative induced self-reflection

School of Life bibliotherapy in action

 Live Bibliotherapy - YouTube 

Another bibliotherapeutic reader reflects

 Adventures in Bibliotherapy and Book-covery | Beth Babbles About Books 

Ellen Ullman

By Blood quotes:

...understanding a feeling is no protection against actually feeling it.

...we might have seen the future, but of course one lives drenched in the past, that wet cloak that weighs around one's shoulders.

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour-Bookstore

There was lots of buzz in calligraphy class about Robin Sloan's "24 Hour Bookstore." Though not overly-impressed, I liked it. It was an easy read, a bit contrived, but still a good story. The font connection was a nice touch: Gerritszoon aka Aldus Manutius a famous typesetter from the Fifteenth Century. The stuff portraying politics at Google was also fun though somehow unconvincing.

A few titles recommended in the text (along with everything by Murakami and Gibson) include The Information and House of Leaves.

Social Reading good news for bibliotherapy advocates

 'Social reading' the next phase of e-book revolution - Canada - CBC News 

Cory Doctorow's Homeland

In the sequel to Little Brother, we find our hero amping up, politicking with a purpose. And with the same theme: things are bad and might well get worse. Marcus gets wise advise from his childhood friend Jolu, advice easily usable, harder to actualize but worth mastering:

"Jolu was right: I just neede to take a step in the direction I wanted to head and stay flexible enough to keep moving that way no matter what happened."

For all ages, the young, the still young, the once young-Doctorow informs, entertains, educates us and keeps us hungry for more. A prolofic writer, he makes every effort to satisfy the obsessive/compulsive reader. But my appetite is only whetted...can't wait for the next one. Doctorow twitted Down & Out Magic Kingdom might be due for a prequel. Bring it.

Google search for "first line generator"

https://www.google.com/search?q=first+line+generator&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Ibiblio digital resource

 ibiblio.org - Google Search 

Link to Kirklees bibliotherapy toolkit

 Bibliotherapy and the Reading and You Scheme (RAYS) 

Reading And You or RAYs bibliotherapy project in UK

 Bibliotherapy in libraries– a literary prescription for health? | Suite101 

Libraries warehouse solace for the soul

 The medicinal power of literature: Books on prescription to be introduced - Health News - Health & Families - The Independent 

School of Life continues to receive excellent press

 Fiction prescription: why libraries make you happy 

MRI supports reading the good stuff

 A Prescription For Happiness – Bibliotherapy. | ofselfandshelf 

Emotional engagement is critical

 BIBLIOTHERAPY, OR, CONSTRUCTING A LIFE OUT OF BOOKS - The Inkling 

Bibliotherapy project

 Bibliotherapy good to see that this is still underdevelopment. Unfortunately, once again, only children and YA  bibliotherapy resources. Still, gotta start somewhere...

Autobiographical memory & Reappraisal mechanism

 Reading Shakespeare and Wordsworth offer better therapy than self-help books | Mail Online 

From London's now famous School of Life

 How to stay sane | Brain Pickings 

Bibliotherapeutic methods for mental stability...

Rede ~ a word spelled with meaning

 What does rede mean? definition and meaning (Free English Language Dictionary) 

DRM free web books

 eBooks@Adelaide: List of Authors 

Search open access theses

 The DART-Europe E-theses Portal 

SciFi List

 AbeBooks: 50 Essential Science Fiction Books 

Goodtherapy.org

 Bibliotherapy 

Nice List of Titles; wish I could entice some readers here

 The reading year ahead — or how I plan to tackle at least a dozen novels that are listed in '1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die' - Reading Matters 

I wish I could interest readers like this in working with me on my bibliotherapy project. How does reading these titles affect your state of mind (individually, not as a group). Feedback is what readersanonymous lacks and I don't seem to know how to make it inviting to participate.

Maybe we as readers would rather just read than have to deconstruct the afteraffects.

Annabel by Kathleen Winter

"You define a tree and you do not see what it is; it becomes its name. It is the same with woman and man. Everywhere ... one or the other, male or female, abandoned by the other."

Canadian author explores gender and "otherness" in story of hermaphrodite identity crisis. Do we know who we are apart from how we are defined by others? Winter lyrically deconstructs "know thyself."

Pinterest quote from new gadget

Creative Reading is Interactive

 Fast Company 

Fear

 TED Blog | The top 10 classic fears in literature 

Dr. Sherry Reiter's bibliotherapy program in NYC

 The Creative "Righting" Center 

Poetry and Story Therapy

The Healing Power of Creative Expression by Geri Giebel Chavis is part of a series library on therapeutic writing worth review. Nothing earth shatteringly original here but basic description of methodology and selection of poems she has selected for use in her bibliotherapeutic practice. Probably a good example of poetry therapy and how it is applied today.

Poetry Therapy advocacy

 International Academy for Poetry Therapy 

Amazon free ebooks SEARCHABLE

 Freebook Sifter - A Resource for Free eBooks 

Cory Doctorow's Chicken Little

Happiness. Our eternal quest. What if we knew exactly what would make us happy? What if we could see how every action's repercussions would affect us? We could choose to be happy.

What if we already have this ability? And we choose not to use it?

As always Doctorow makes me think. His ability to define universal issues in the context of modern mass dilemma is uncanny. His voice is full of confidence in human nature even while revealing to us the flaky crust we each want to call our soul. He makes me feel like we are all baked in this pie together, 40 and 20 blackbirds; that this is how we might have our pie and eat it too. We are the pie.

Reading & Meaning neuroscience explains

 The New Science of Meaning - The Huffington Post 

Search for free ebooks INKMESH

 Sheakespeare and astrology, from a student's point of view Free Ebook | Inkmesh 

Lewis Shiner free pdfs

 Fiction Liberation Front--The Goods 

Roland Barthes quotes from GoodReads.com

 Roland Barthes Quotes (Author of Camera Lucida) 

Some time ago...resulting in my personal Reader's Block

The whole impetus behind my inspiration and intent for bibliotherapy is that creativity heals, is a healing process. But in reading Reader's Block with all the notes of creatives who have committed suicide or have been locked up in looney bins, I am reassessing and thinking it is not so simple.

Feeling deeply is dangerous even when those feelings are transmuted through an artistic medium. So therapeutically accessing feelings requires filters, thus art's structural confines and the importance of taking the time to develop skill sets related to the chosen medium.

Reading what someone else has written is a filtering by the author, i.e., the work has been done for the reader. It is only by fleshing out the work in relation to personal references that there is access and process occurring in any meaningful way for the reader. The most meaningful being to, in turn, become an author and make yet more meaning

Until my pain or pleasure or peace is looking back at me, I am not fully conscious of its worth or able to integrate the feeling in a healthy way, whether re-experiencing it or learning to move on.

Dreaming & Reading

 lorebrarian sent you a note: I propose that when some disturbing waking experience is reactivated in sleep and carried forward into REM, where it is matched by similarity in feeling to earlier memories, a network of older associations is stimulated and is displayed as a sequence of compound images that we experience as dreams. This melding of new and old memory fragments modifies the network of emotional self-defining memories, and thus updates the organizational picture we hold of ‘who I am and what is good for me and what is not.’ In this way, dreaming diffuses the emotional charge of the event and so prepares the sleeper to wake ready to see things in a more positive light, to make a fresh start.

From 24hr day theory, could also apply to how we process what we read.

Dora : A Headcase by Lydia Yuknavitch

Quote: People are like books and movies. There are about a gazillion different interpretations.

ALA's wiki listing some bibliotherapy resources

 Bibliotherapy - Professionaltips 

ALA's somewhat dismissive attitude to Bibliotherapy

 Bibliotherapy | American Libraries Magazine 

Psychology Wiki listing

 Poetry therapy - Psychology Wiki 

Poetry therapy locator

 AuthorMapper 

Revolution World by Katy Stauber

First novel by a biochemistry/mathematics major. Dystoptian comedy? Only Texas setting could satisfy sustained disbelief that makes for this delightfully weird Mona Lisa Overdrive meets True Blood, but with comedic layerings, bio/cyber scifi adenture.

Think psychology & art Peer2Peer University

 P2PU | What Philosophers Can Do For Artists | Full Description 

1Q84 Haruki Murakami

Quote p. 178 "No matter how clear the relationships of things might become in the forest of story, there was never a clear-cut solution. ...The role of story was, in the broadest terms, to transpose a single problem into another form. Depending on the nature and direction of the problem, a solution could be suggested in the narrative. ...It was like a piece of paper bearing the indecipherable text of a magic spell. At times it lacked coherence and served no immediate practical purpose. But it would contain a possibility. Someday he might be able to decipher the spell."

excellent YALSA bibliotherapy article

Other Bibliotherapy- Related Terms Literatherapy: Refers to the direct and intentional use of literary text in conjunction with psychotherapy. Bibliodiagnostics: When bibliotherapy’s techniques are used for assessment. Iblioprophylaxis: When bibliotherapy is used for prevention. Videotherapy: The use of film or video for therapeutic purposes. What is bibliotherapy? Is it giving a person struggling with depression a self-help book? Is it teaching problem-solving skills to a third-grader by working through a book together? Is it when a nurse uses a book to help a diabetic child come to terms with the disease? In each case the answer is a resounding “yes.” Literature on the topic of bibliotherapy—whether quantitative research studies using control groups, anecdotal accounts, or statements about the efficacy and power of books—points to one conclusion: books can and do make a difference. The definitions of bibliotherapy range from the simplest—“helping with books”—to a more complex one described by Katz and Watt as “the guided use of reading, always with a therapeutic outcome in mind.”1 The ancient Greeks recognized the power of books as therapeutic tools by inscribing these words above the door at the library of Thebes: “The medicine chest of the soul.” It is not the definition of bibliotherapy that is perplexing, but rather the worry that the principle of “giving the right patron the right book at the right time” could turn into a troika of wrongs—the wrong patron, the wrong book, and the wrong time.2 Over time, mental health specialists and librarians—and to a smaller degree, nurses and educators—have kept the practice of bibliotherapy alive albeit on theperiphery of their professions. While many mental health professionals consider bibliotherapy lacking compared to other more tried-and-true treatments, librarians shy away from anything that suggests therapy. Even though most librarians wholeheartedly believe that books can heal, there is confusion about their role in this process. Principally, librarians worry about overstepping their bounds. They worry that a book suggested by them could heap additional distress on a patron who is already suffering. Bibliotherapy Has a History The term bibliotherapy was first coined in 1916 by Unitarian minister Samuel Crothers, who wrote in The Atlantic Monthly about a technique of bringing troubled persons together with books.3 By the early 1920s, Sadie Peterson Delaney,chief ibrarian of the United States Veterans Administration Hospital in Tuskegee, Alabama, was using books to treat the psychological and physical needs of African American war veterans. Thefirst step in bibliotherapy, which Delaney defined as “the treatment of a patient through selected reading” was to know the patient through case histories as well as books.4 Working as a team of social workers and psychiatrists, their purpose was to “enable patients to connect—or reconnect—themselves with a broad community of ideas.”5 Delaney’s holistic practice of bibliotherapy transcended typical literary events such as book groups and story hours to include hobby clubs and activities such as stamp and coin collecting and debating to awaken a patient’s mind. Delaney’s techniques created such a buzz that she received worldwide recognition. Between 1924 and 1958, Delaney spoke at major conferences and held lectures in conjunction with psychology courses, and actively trained other librarians in the practice of bibliotherapy.6 In 1937, Dr. William C. Menninger, a founder of the Menninger Clinic, a prestigious group psychiatry practice, edited a book about psychiatry that included several of his papers. In one of these papers he described the purposes of bibliotherapy, how it fit into a patient’s treatment plan,and how it was to be prescribed. At the Menninger Clinic, bibliotherapy was used to treat mental illness but only after the patient’s background, symptoms, and therapeutic needs had been evaluated. Because bibliotherapy was considered a treatment, the physician was responsible for the contents of the library and must approve the books before they [were] purchased,” and for prescribing reading assignments.7 The librarian’s responsibilities included “the mechanics of purchasing and maintaining and distributing the books,” as well as having personal knowledge of the bookand interviewing patients about their reading.8 Wolpow and Askov believe that Menninger’s writings brought about the “polemic confusion as to what constituted therapy in bibliotherapy. Was it the interaction between the book and the reader? Was it the interaction among the book, the reader, and the person directing the reader? Or was it the interaction between bibliotherapy supervisor and the reader?”9 Caroline Shrodes furthered the study in her 1950 dissertation, when she postulated that there is a psychological basis to bibliotherapy. According to Shrodes, the reader “under the impact of imaginative literature, is subject to certain processes of adaptation or growth,” which correspond to the major phases of psychotherapy: identification, projection, abreaction and catharsis, and insight.10 First, identification and projection occur when the reader shares a problem, circumstance, or issue with the book’s character. Second, abreaction and catharsis occur for the reader when the character resolves a problem, circumstance, or issue. Third, insight occurs when the reader reflects on his or her situation and internalizes the character’s solution. In the 1970s, Rhea Joyce Rubin added to the librarian’s understanding of bibliotherapy by editing the classics Bibliotherapy Sourcebook and Using Bibliotherapy: A Guide to Theory and Practice. By this time, bibliotherapy had been categorized into several types. One type, the art of bibliotherapy, is similar to reader’s advisory practiced by librarians. Other terms for this include implicit, developmental, and nonmedical bibliotherapy.11 A second type, the science of bibliotherapy, is practiced by trained mental health professionals. Other terms for this type include explicit, clinical,diagnostic, or institutional.12 In her books, Rubin answered the question first posed by Alice Bryan in 1939: “Can there be a science of bibliotherapy?” To be considered a science rather than an art, bibliotherapyneeds a body of experimental data that proves its effectiveness. Rubin’s intent was to present this scientific evidence to librarians and others. Mental Health Specialists and Bibliotherapy While librarians know that books are powerful, mental health specialists have conducted rigorous studies to prove bibliotherapy works. By using metaanalysis, a technique of synthesizing research results using various statistical methods, mental health specialists have determined that bibliotherapy is effective in certain circumstances. Pieter Cuijpers and Robert J. Gregory et al. performed meta-analysis to isolate the effectiveness of bibliotherapy in treating depression.13 Mark Floyd used meta-analysis to gage the effectiveness of bibliotherapy to assuage geriatric depression.14 Timothy R. Apodaca and William R. Miller conducted a meta-analysis to determine the effectiveness of bibliotherapy in treating alcohol problems.15 In each of these meta-analyses, bibliotherapy was found to be an effective treatment in certain instances. First, it was found to be most effective with individuals whose mental health issues are minimal to moderate in severity. Second, bibliotherapy is most effective in combination with other treatments. Third, bibliotherapy is a viable option in rural areas where mental health treatment is not available or when therapy time is limited. For instance, in one study comparing treatments for panic attacks, bibliotherapy was more beneficial than minimal interventions such as phone contact with a therapist.16 Fourth, bibliotherapy increases the patient’s sense of responsibility. It works best with motivated individuals who are functioning at a higher cognitive level. However, Floyd cautions that bibliotherapy may be harmful if theclient feels that the therapist is minimizing their problems by giving them a book.17 Dr. Cindy Crosscope Scott, a licensed counselor in North Carolina, utilizes fiction, fables, fairy tales, song lyrics, and self-help books in her practice. She often uses these materials with patients “out of session,” as homework, to mull over and discuss at the next meeting because “sometimes books get through when nothing else does.”18 She cautions that because “we are a nation that wants to be fixed,” some self-help books with a simplistic “follow these steps and you will be healed” approach can cause anxious patients to feel even more so.19 Dr. Scott asks two questions when selecting self-help books: Is the author respected in the field? Does the author base self-help recommendations on empirical research?20 Librarians and Bibliotherapy Librarians and other professionals, such as nurses and educators, have written many anecdotal articles describing how books can, and do, make a difference. Shirfra Baruchson-Arbib tells of an experiment in a school library in Israel in which a smallcollection of supportive self-help, prose, and poetry books were made available to students in grades seven through nine for the purpose of stimulating discussion about relevant issues and problems facing the teens.21 Baruchson-Arbib believes that the function of the school library in contemporary society needs to go beyond its traditional role to one that helps teens in three ways: to “absorb cultural values and knowledge,” to become active members of the community, and to understand their problems.22 She suggests that librarians adopt another name for bibliotherapy, such as “supportive knowledge,” since the connotation of therapy dominates discussions about the helpfulness of books.23 Lenkowsky and Lenkowsky encourage the use of literature with learning disabled students who bring special problems and challenges to the classroom because of past histories of academic and social failure.24 One student, Bonnie, a fifteen-year-old reading at a sixth-grade level, had very few friends and was concerned that she might never date. After it was discovered that Bonnie’s reading interest revolved around sports, a high-interest, low-vocabulary book about a lonely girl who excelled at basketball was recommended to Bonnie. Her self confidence grew as she read this book, and then had more difficult ones read to her, about girls who overcame their social struggles. Two nurses, Manworren and Woodring, write about the ways children’sliterature can be used to educate patients about illness, surgery, and hospitalization.25 Their concerns about the developmental appropriateness and accuracy of literature are similar to librarians’ concerns: how to evaluate popular literature for developmental appropriateness and content accuracy. Amer writes about how nurses used books to help children with short stature and diabetes discuss their feelings and cope with their challenges.26 The Littlest Leaguer by Syd Hoff (Windmill, 1976) was used with short-stature children. Diabetic children benefited from Sugar Isn’t Everything by Willo Davis Roberts (Atheneum, 1987)and Tough Beans by Betty Bates (Holiday House, 1988). Amer encourages nurses and parents to use books to help children discuss their ailments.27 Individuals and Bibliotherapy Whether books are used clinically or developmentally, they are powerful. People who value reading usually have a story or two to share about how books helped them deal with a certain situation. After my son’s girlfriend, Emily (her name has been changed), died suddenly, I thought long and hard about my responsibilities as a librarian working with teens, many of whom were in pain as a result of myriad family and personal problems not uncommon in today’s society. As part of my grieving process, I turned to books that I thought could have helped Emily deal with her challenges if only I had known enough to recommend them to her. For example, I was drawn to Solitary Blue by Cynthia Voigt. I would have wanted Emily to recognize the similarities between her life and that of Jeff ’s, the main character. Several incidents from the book mirrored Emily’s life in so many ways. In one scene, Jeff is stranded at the Charleston airport waiting for his chronically late mother,Melody, to arrive. In another scene Melody trades in Jeff ’s airplane ticket for a bus ticket because “there are better uses for the extra dollars” but neglects to give him any money for food even though the bus ride was sixteen hours long.28 Jeff was able to protect himself by tapping into his inner strengths and welcoming the support of others. I would have wanted the same for Emily. Where Do We Go From Here? As a population, we are much more aware of mental health challenges and recognize the value of self-help efforts. Any time a book is read by someone who needs its message to solve a problem or reflect on a challenge, bibliotherapy has occurred. Even recommending a book as part of reader’s advisory may touch on bibliotherapy if the book is used to heal. Therefore, it is clear that librarians conduct reader’s advisory and developmental bibliotherapy without hesitation. Concern kicks in when giving someone a book who has mental health issues morphs into therapy. There are roles for librarians in the art of developmental bibliotherapy, as well as clinical therapy. Perhaps one role for librarians in the science of bibliotherapy is to partner with mental health specialists to provide the names of books as well as specific passages that could be useful in therapy. In this way, librarians can be proactive and prove their usefulness to mental health specialists. On their own, it is of primary importance that librarians select quality books; self-help books must be well-written and credible. Secondly, perhaps a series of informational programs by mental health professionals with books and films tacked on could be developed. Finally, librarians should always be aware of community problems and issues discussed in the media because it is likely patrons will request information on such topics. YALS Additional Reading Burgin, Robert, ed. Nonfiction Reader’s Advisory. Libraries Unlimited, 2004; ISBN 159158115X; $39.95. Doll, Beth, and Carol Doll. Bibliotherapy with Young People: Librarians and Mental Health Professionals Working Together. Libraries Unlimited, 1997; ISBN 1563084074; $25.00. Hesley, John W., and Jan G. Hesley. Rent Two Films and Let’s Talk in the Morning: Using Popular Movies in Psychotherapy. John Wiley & Sons, 2001; ISBN 0471416592; $47.50. Joshua, Janice Maidman, and Donna DiMenna. Read Two Books and Let’s Talk Next Week: Using Bibliotherapy in Clinical Practice. John Wiley & Sons, 2000; ISBN 0471375659; $49.95. Stanley, Linda. Reading to Heal. Element, 1999; ISBN 1862043906; $21.95. References 1. Gilda Katz and John A. Watt, “Bibliotherapy: The Use of Books in Psychiatric Treatment,” Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 37, no. 3 (1992): 173. 2. Brian W. Sturm, “Reader’s Advisory and Bibliotherapy: Helping or Healing?”, Journal of Educational Media and Library Sciences 41, no. 2 (2003): 177. 3. Lauren Myracle, “Molding the Minds of the Young: The History of Bibliotherapy as Applied to Children and Adolescents,” The ALAN Review 22, no. 2 (1995): 36–40. 4. Betty K. Gubert, “Sadie Peterson Delaney:Pioneer Bibliotherapist,” American Libraries 24, no. 2 (1993): 127. 5. Ibid., 127. 6. Ibid., 125. 7. William. C. Menninger, A Psychiatrist for a Troubled World: Selected Papers of William C. Menninger, M.D. (New York: Viking Press, 1967): 316. 8. Ibid, 317. 9. Ray Wolpow and Eunice N. Askov, “Widened Frameworks and Practice: From Bibliotherapy to the Literacy of Testimony and Witness,” Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 44 (7): 606. 10. Rhea Joyce Rubin, Using Bibliotherapy: A Guide to Theory and Practice (Phoenix: Oryx Pr., 1978), 34. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. Pieter Cuijpers, “Bibliotherapy in Unipolar Depression: A Meta-analysis,” Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry 28 no. 2 (1997): 139–47; Robert J. Gregory et al., “Cognitive Bibliotherapy for Depression: a Meta-analysis,” Professional Psychology: Research and Practice 35 no. 3(2004): 275–80. 14. Mark Floyd, “Bibliotherapy as an Adjunctto Psychotherapy for Depression in Older Adults,” JCLP/In Session: Psychotherapy inPractice 59, no. 2 (2003): 187–95. 15. Timothy R. Apodaca and William. R. Miller, “A Meta-analysis of the Effectiveness of Bibliotherapy for Alcohol Problems,” Journal of Clinical Psychology 59, no. 3 (2003): 289–304. 16. G. A. R. Febbraro, “An Investigation into the Effectiveness of Bibliotherapy and Minimal Contact Interventions in the Treatment of Panic Attacks,” Journal of Clinical Psychology 61, no 6 (2005): 763–79. 17. Floyd, “Bibliotheraphy as an Adjunct to Psychotherapy for Depression in Older Adults.” 18. Personal interview with Dr. Cindy Scott, May 9, 2006. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid. 21. Shifra Baruchson-Arbib, “Bibliotherapy in School Libraries: An Israeli Experiment,” School Libraries Worldwide 6, no. 2 (2000): 102–10. 22. Ibid., 103. 23. Ibid., 105. 24. Barbara E. Lenkowsky and Ronald S. Lenkowsky, “Bibliotherapy for the LD Adolescent,” Academic Therapy 14, no. 2 (1978): 179–85. 25. Renee CB Manworren and Barbara Woodring, “Evaluating Children’s Literature as a Source for Patient Education,” Pediatric Nursing 24, no. 6 (1998): 548–53. 26. Kim Amer, “Bibliotherapy: Using Fiction to Help Children in Two Populations Discuss Feelings,” Pediatric Nursing 25,no. 3 (1999): 91–95. 27. Ibid. 28. Cynthia Voigt, Solitary Blue (New York: Scholastic, 1983), 44. article by JAMI L. JONES, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Department of Library Science and Instructional Technology at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina.