Article: Bibliotherapy

Bibliotherapy appears to have originated as a form of play therapy, Anna Freud's adaptation and expansion of psychoanalysis for the purpose of treating children.

At its most basic, bibliotherapy consists of the selection of reading material, for a child or teen, with special relevance to that young person's life situation. The idea of bibliotherapy seems to have grown naturally from the human inclination to identify with others through their expressions in literature and art. For instance, a grieving child who reads (or is read to) a story about another child who has lost a parent will naturally feel less alone in the world.

The concept of bibliotherapy has widened over time, such that it now can be used to describe adults reading self-help manuals without therapeutic intervention, or a therapist "prescribing" a movie that might provide needed catharsis to a client. Still, the phrase is most often used in reference to children.

Bibliotherapy can consist solely of reading, or it can be complemented with discussion or play activity. A child might be asked to draw a scene from the book or asked whether commonality is felt with a particular character in the book. The book can be used to draw out a child on a subject (s)he has been hesitant to discuss.

Of necessity, bibliotherapy originally used existing texts. Literature that touched on the particular subject relevant to the child provided the source material. It is now possible, of course, to find texts targeted to the situation. For instance, many of The Berenstain Bears books seem to have as their sole and explicit purpose the targeting of particular behaviors and situations.

There seems to be a division of opinion as to whether bibliotherapy need take place in a therapeutic environment, with therapists specially trained in bibliotherapy at the far end of the spectrum taking the position that this technique should take place only in their skilled hands for fear of the damage that could be done even by the selection of the wrong text. Others see no reason why children can't benefit merely by their parents selecting meaningful reading material.