Speaker: Velna Roncevic @Velna
Affiliation: University of Zagreb
Title: The therapeutic effects of literature: personal reflection of readers
Abstract (long version below): The paper analyses examples of a transformative effect on the wellbeing of readers during private, unprescribed, and unguided encounters with literature. Effects on the mental health are viewed as a form of literary application and show how literature carries over into everyday life. Examples are selected by a keyword search – trauma, psychotherapy, therapy, helped, crisis, in a database on memories of reading. The search reveals a general view of reading as therapeutic and specific examples of readers therapeutic effects of reading. This presentation focuses on the latter and analyses the therapeutic connections readers make reflecting on private reading experiences.
Long abstract
Is literature healthy? Asks Josie Billington (2016) with the tittle of her book. Research from various fields indicates that it indeed is, and that even the cognitive engagement required by reading books can extend life (Bavishi et al. 2016). As an example of the transformative potential of reading, the therapeutic effect reading has on mental health has been well established (Billington 2019). It has been demonstrated through various approaches such as individual or group bibliotherapy and shared reading (Gray et al. 2019). However, this paper will present examples of a transformative effect on the wellbeing of readers during their private encounters with literature – those that are not prescribed, guided or intended for a specific issue.
This research is part of a wider study called Remembering Literature in Everyday Life (ReLEL or PoKUS in Croatian), a research project financed by the Croatian Science Foundation. The goal of the project is to comprehensively identify and interpret facts about the memory of literature in everyday life among non-professional readers in Croatia by conducting semi-structured interviews. One thousand and five semi-structured interviews on memories about specific works or authors selected by readers were carried out. The interviews were recorded and the researchers entered essential data into a single database. Although the question whether literature influenced their wellbeing was not asked by the researchers, examples were brought up by during the interview process by the readers themselves. The examples that will be presented in this paper were selected by a search for certain keywords in the database: trauma, psychotherapy, therapy, helped, crisis. The search reveled two types of statements – a general view of reading as having a therapeutic effect and specific examples of readers’ making connections to specific texts and difficult life circumstances. This paper will focus on the latter – examples when readers explicitly refer to a reading experience as having had a therapeutic effect, helped them cope with issues in their lives or got them through a crisis. The research aims to provide ecological insight into the different kinds of life circumstances that non-professional readers found literature to be helpful for their wellbeing.
I consider the transformative effect of literature on readers’ mental health and wellbeing as a form of literary application as defined by Anders Pettersson (2012) – “a complex act of focusing on something in a literary text, comparing the element with a somehow corresponding element in the real world, and evaluating the comparison.” Similar to what Anderson terms ‘echoes’ or the way a text impacts a reader and what stays after the immediate reading experience (Andersen 2022, Andersen and Hakemulder 2023). According to Billington (2016), the true transformative effect of fiction and poetry happens without a predetermined goal or purpose – “poetry and fiction do not have a health agenda,” she states. For a transformative reading experience to occur an engaged and emphatic response is necessary, that is, the reader needs to be ‘moved’ by the text (Hakemulder 2000, Djikic et al. 2009, Tangerås 2020). Not all texts are meaningful or have an impact on all readers, and even the same reader is not necessarily moved by the same text at any time of their life. Through the process of “self implication” (Kuiken et al. 2004), the reader needs to relate to the texts in some way – a process which is, again, contingent on an emotional response and personal circumstances. As Billington (2016) states “the healing effects of literature take place in the reader” and that is why a specific text or book cannot be “good” for something or for someone. In the appropriate circumstances, books reveal their personal significance to readers independently of whether they are actively seeking it or not.
By providing empirical examples on the therapeutic effects of literature in encounters of open, unguided, unprescribed and private reading, this paper will show how, by way of application of literature, reading affects readers’ realities and how the therapeutic effect of books ‘echoes’ in their lives.
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