Practising creative bibliotherapy down under: understanding diverse approaches to literature as therapy

ABSTRACT

This article explores how practitioners of creative bibliotherapy utilise diverse approaches and understand the therapeutic possibilities of their practice. Creative bibliotherapy involves the therapeutic use of literature by a non-clinical facilitator working with groups or individuals. It is distinct from clinical bibliotherapy as a therapeutic approach, which generally works with non-fiction self-help texts in clinical contexts. While clinical bibliotherapy has been well-studied, there is a paucity of research on creative bibliotherapy, which only gained momentum in Australia in the 2010s. Based on in-depth qualitative interviews with bibliotherapists in Australia we explore differences in the practitioners’ methods, approaches and backgrounds as well as the ideas of literature and wellbeing underpinning the practice. An inductive thematic analysis identified three key areas of difference: the therapeutic intentions of the practitioners, the diversity of the people they work with and their understanding of the role of literature in the bibliotherapeutic process.

KEYWORDS:

• Creative bibliotherapy
• Shared Reading
• practitioners
• literature
• wellbeing
• therapeutic

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In the field of social work and other therapeutic contexts, the term “client” is widely used (McDonald, 2006) and may have influenced Sonya whose background is in psychology and social work.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by La Trobe University under an ABC Scheme Grant.