APPLICATIONS OF BIBLIOTHERAPY

Bibliotherapy has been utilized in a variety of settings for a number of specific problems. People in various parallel professions have been involved in its application. It has been utilized extensively in neuropsychiatric hospitals as well as in outpatient psychiatric treatment. It has been applied to children, adolescents, and adults, in short-term or long-term treatment plans,and for a variety of psychopathologies.

The objectives of the application of Bibliotherapy are numerous. Using both didactic and imaginative literature, the levels of intervention may be divided into four broad areas: intellectual, social, behavioral, and emotional (Sclabassi, 1973).On the intellectual level, Bibliotherapy is used to stimulate the individual to think and analyze attitudes and behaviuor between sessions and allow the person to realize that there are choices in the way problems are handled.The individual may obtain facts needed for solution of problems, and acquire knowledge about human behaviuor to help understand one’s own self and gain intellectual insight. It may also widen the individual’s sphere of interests.

On the social level,Bibliotherapy can be used to expand an individual’s

awareness beyond his own frame of reference and to increase social sensitivity by being,in the imagination, in the place of others. It may be used to reinforce social and cultural patterns, absorb human values, and give a feeling of belonging. It may also help channel socially unapproved expressions of emotion and impulse, and facilitate the reader to form satisfactory life goals and thus live more effectively.

Behaviourally, Bibliotherapy can contribute to competence in activities. It can also give the individual an opportunity to experiment imaginatively with various modes of behaviour and envision the probable effects. It may help to inhibit infantile behaviour,promote growth in reaction patterns,and develop wholesome principles of conduct.

Emotionally, Bibliotherapy may provide a vicarious experience without initially exposing the person to the risks of actual experience. The reader may gain confidence in talking about problems ordinarily difficult to discuss, due to such feelings as fear, shame, or guilt, and it may encourage discussion without the initial embarrassment of explicit self-revelation. It may enable the reader to bring submerged feelings and experiences to consciousness, effect controlled release of unconscious processes, and develop emotional insight. It may provide successful solution of similar problems in others, thus stimulating eagerness to solve one’s own problems.It can also help the individual to understand the motivations of self and others in a particular situation.