{"id":10918,"date":"2018-11-19T09:58:42","date_gmt":"2018-11-19T09:58:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ounews.co\/?p=10918"},"modified":"2018-11-19T09:58:42","modified_gmt":"2018-11-19T09:58:42","slug":"bibliotherapy-how-reading-and-writing-have-been-healing-trauma-since-world-war-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/arts-social-sciences\/art-literature-music\/bibliotherapy-how-reading-and-writing-have-been-healing-trauma-since-world-war-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Bibliotherapy: how reading and writing have been healing trauma since World War I"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Bibliotherapy \u2013 the idea that reading can have a beneficial effect<\/a> on mental health \u2013 has undergone a resurgence<\/a>. There is mounting clinical evidence that reading can, for example, help people overcome loneliness<\/a> and social exclusion. One scheme in Coventry<\/a> allows health professionals to prescribe books to their patients from a list drawn up by mental health experts.<\/p>\n

Even as public library services across Britain are cut back, the healing potential of books is increasingly recognised<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The idea of the healing book has a long history. Key concepts were forged in the crucible of World War I, as nurses, doctors and volunteer librarians grappled with treating soldiers\u2019 minds as well as bodies. The word \u201cbibliotherapy\u201d itself was coined in 1914, by American author and minister Samuel McChord Crothers<\/a>. Helen Mary Gaskell (1853-1940), a pioneer of \u201cliterary caregiving\u201d, wrote about the beginnings of her war library<\/a> in 1918:<\/p>\n

Surely many of us lay awake the night after the declaration of War, debating \u2026 how best we could help in the coming struggle \u2026 Into the mind of the writer came, like a flash, the necessity of providing literature for the sick and wounded.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The well-connected Gaskell took her idea to the medical<\/a> and governmental<\/a> authorities, gaining official approval. Lady Battersea<\/a>, a close friend, offered her a Marble Arch mansion to store donated books, and The Times carried multiple successful public appeals. As Gaskell wrote:<\/p>\n

What was our astonishment when not only parcels and boxes, but whole libraries poured in. Day after day vans stood unloading at the door.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Gaskell\u2019s library was affiliated to the Red Cross in 1915 and operated internationally \u2013 with depots in Egypt, Malta, and Salonika. Her operating principles, axiomatic to bibliotherapy, were to provide a \u201cflow of comfort\u201d based on a \u201cpersonal touch\u201d. Gaskell explained that \u201cthe man who gets the books he needs is the man who really benefits from our library, physically and mentally\u201d.<\/p>\n

Her colleagues running Endell Street Military Hospital\u2019s library shared similar views<\/a> about the importance of books in wartime. On August 12, 1916, the Daily Telegraph reported on the hospital, calling the library a \u201cstory in itself\u201d. Run by novelist Beatrice Harraden<\/a>, a member of the Womens Social and Political Union<\/a> and also, briefly, the actress and feminist playwright Elizabeth Robins<\/a>, the library was a fundamental part of the treatment of 26,000 wounded between 1915 and 1918.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe learned,\u201d Robins wrote in Ancilla\u2019s Share, her 1924 analysis of gender politics, \u201cthat the best way, often the only way, to get on with curing men\u2019s bodies was to do something for their minds.\u201d<\/p>\n

The books the men wanted first were likely to be by the ex-journalist and popular writer Nat Gould<\/a>, whose novels about horseracing were bestsellers. Otherwise, fiction by Rudyard Kipling, Marie Corelli, or Robert Louis Stevenson rated highly. In the Cornhill Magazine<\/a> in November, 1916, Harraden revealed that the librarians\u2019 \u201cpilgrimages\u201d from one bedside to another ensured what she called \u201cgood literature\u201d was always within reach, but that the book that would \u201cheal\u201d was the one that was most wanted:<\/p>\n

However ill [a patient] was, however suffering and broken, the name of Nat Gould would always bring a smile to his face.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The literary caregivers at Endell Street worked responsively, and without judgement, a crucial legacy.<\/p>\n

Library on the frontline<\/h2>\n

Literary caregiving also took place closer to the front. Throughout the war, the YMCA operated<\/a> a network of recreation huts and lending libraries for soldiers. After losing his only son, Oscar, at Ypres, the author E. W. Hornung<\/a> offered his services to the YMCA. Hornung \u2013 a relatively obscure figure now, but a literary celebrity then \u2013 authored the \u201cRaffles<\/a>\u201d stories about the gentleman thief of the same name.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Longshaw Lodge Convalescent Home for Wounded Soldiers, Grindleford, near Sheffield.<\/span>
\nTyne & Wear Archives & Museums<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Arriving in France in late 1917, Hornung was initially put to work serving tea to British soldiers. But the YMCA soon found him a more suitable job, placing him in charge<\/a> of a new lending library for soldiers in Arras. Dispensing tea and books to soldiers helped him process his grief. Hearing soldiers talk about their favourite books played a key role in his recovery \u2013 but he also sincerely believed that reading helped soldiers keep their minds healthy while they were in the trenches. Hornung wrote in 1918 that he wanted to feed \u201cthe intellectually starved\u201d, while \u201calways remembering that they are fighting-men first and foremost, and prescribing for them both as such and as the men they used to be\u201d.<\/p>\n

Writing a new future<\/h2>\n

Present-day veterans encounter the potential of reading and writing in equally participatory ways as interventions with the charities Combat Stress UK (CSUK) and Veterans\u2019 Outreach Services demonstrate.<\/p>\n

In CSUK, we read widely from contemporary work before undertaking writing exercises. These were designed to help provide detachment from the internal repetition of traumatic stories that some with PTSD experience. The director of therapy at CSUK, Janice Lobban, says:<\/p>\n

Collaborative work \u2026 gave combat stress veterans the valuable opportunity of developing creative writing skills. Typically, the clinical presentation of veterans causes them to avoid unfamiliar situations and the loss of self-confidence can affect the ability to develop creative potential. Workshops within the safety of our Surrey treatment centre<\/a> enabled veterans to have the confidence to experiment with new ideas.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Another approach, in workshops with Veterans\u2019 Outreach Support<\/a> in Portsmouth in 2018, explored the role of writing in training veterans to become \u201cpeer-mentors\u201d of other veterans wanting to access VOS services, ranging from physical and mental wellness to housing benefits to job-seeking.<\/p>\n

The results show that veterans responded positively to opportunities for imaginative writing. Trainee peer-mentors responding to a questionnaire told us that the exercises helped them to write fluently about their own lives. For people who spend so much time filling out forms to access various benefits, the opportunity to write creatively was seen as a liberating experience. As one veteran put it: \u201cWe are writing into ourselves\u201d.<\/p>\n

For 100 years now, reading and writing have helped veterans build relationships, gain confidence and face the challenges of their post-service lives. Our current research charts the influence of wartime literary caregiving on contemporary practice.<\/p>\n

Sara Haslam<\/a>, Senior Lecturer in English, The Open University<\/a><\/em>; Edmund King<\/a>, Lecturer in English, The Open University<\/a><\/em>, and Siobhan Campbell<\/a>, Lecturer of Creative Writing, The Open University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bibliotherapy \u2013 the idea that reading can have a beneficial effect on mental health \u2013 has undergone a resurgence. There is mounting clinical evidence that reading can, for example, help people overcome loneliness and social exclusion. One scheme in Coventry allows health professionals to prescribe books to their patients from a list drawn up by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":10919,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[260,522,673,714,719,1332,1525,1640,1849,1874,2229,2460,2461],"class_list":["post-10918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-literature-music","tag-bibliotherapy","tag-creative-writing","tag-dr-edmund-king","tag-dr-sara-haslam","tag-dr-siobhan-campbell","tag-literature","tag-news-home","tag-ou-home","tag-psychology","tag-reading","tag-therapy","tag-writing","tag-ww1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10918\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}