Bibliotherapy: "outdated" Books

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

I remember that as a child, I often turned to my parents for a recommendation to read something. Mom usually recommended what she liked, that is, she rather projected her feelings on me.

Dad asked in detail and picked up something. He guessed more often.

Moreover, I easily remembered stories and related experiences, but I could just as easily forget the author and the title of the book.

To remember, you had to ask your parents or teachers when describing the story. And, if I was lucky, they called me the author.

Maybe that's why, having become a psychoanalyst, I returned with such pleasure to reading as a therapeutic way of contact with myself.

In the same book, different readers will see different things - each something different. Someone will remain indifferent, even if the book has become a bestseller. And what to do if it does not touch, does not touch? Obviously, look for something else.

Popularity ratings for children's books show that many preferences have remained unchanged over the years. And the programs in schools remain more or less stable, so that variations are possible mainly in “home” reading or in extracurricular activities. And most of the classic children's literature resonates with today's children.

But sometimes it happens that children do not recognize the situations described in the book, they cannot put themselves in the shoes of the heroes, relate themselves to them and appropriate themselves certain emotions that the books aroused in their parents.

I observe this, for example, with Oseeva's book "Blue Leaves" - the last two generations of children do not really understand why the girl did not have a green pencil. Children sometimes ask why mom didn't put pencils on the heroine. Probably forgot … And so the meaning of the story moves to a completely different plane - from a story about kindness it becomes a story about, for example, interaction with mom, her care, meanings and conclusions change. This did not make the story worse, but now the parents with their children will have to see something else important in it themselves..

There are also advantages - "outdated" works are also freed from numerous evaluative clichés, habitual judgments and moral burden. To some extent, such stories are even easier to discuss in terms of the feelings they evoke.

So it is very helpful to give children a choice - something will certainly respond to the child and become a book that he or she wants to share with his or her children.

This kind of experience of joint reading is remarkably described by AV Kitaeva in the book "Matyukha-course. Pedagogical adventure".

“Last night I downloaded, preparing for a meeting with Matyukha," Only old men go to battle. " I looked at the first shots and everything inside me trembled with anticipation of how we would watch with him. I remembered myself, I saw at his age.

So we watched half a film with him. Impossibly boring. People smoke, sweat and talk about completely incomprehensible things. Not only the cinema language has changed, the rhythm of life has changed so much that it is almost impossible to slow down to their pace. I am very grateful to Matyukha for this experience. It finally dawned on me that today's kids don't have to watch all those films that once made an impression on us. Even very strong.

I realized this about books when my daughter in adolescence could not overcome Three

musketeers , which I once read twenty times.

Perhaps, in a pedagogical sense, this is an important experience. He will respect his own feelings."

So, book therapy is based on individual preferences and reading tastes as well as specific needs. ⠀

1. It is important that the choice of books corresponds to the age of the reader, his capabilities and interests, as well as was interesting and close to his life and reading experience. What one likes is not like the other. ⠀

2. It is important that the selection of reading materials arouses interest in content and design.

Not all readers can be satisfied with e-books, some need a touch of their book, sometimes the one with which they are familiar from childhood. This explains the search for publications familiar from childhood; they say, now this is not printed. ⠀

3. It is important that the works contribute to an increase in a sense of significance and the acquisition of the ability to counteract destructive emotional states.

At school, they usually teach to "disassemble" the text, understand the internal relationships, highlight the main thoughts, highlight the "moral", almost never - immerse yourself in the feelings of the main characters. And since reading therapy is aimed not at the development of logical thinking, but at immersion in feelings, the focus will be different even in well-known works. ⠀

If through the heroes of a book or a separate fairy tale, story you manage to evoke reflection in yourself or turn to yourself in childhood, then new experiences are available to you even through identification with negative characters, i.e. things that are not usually practiced in school. Repressed socially disapproved feelings like anger or irritation are just easier to accept through the acceptance of negative characters. ⠀

As with any art therapy method, acceptance is more important than social approval.