Evidence-based medicine’s (EBM) quantitative methodologies reflect medical science’s long-standing mistrust of the imprecision and subjectivity of ordinary descriptive language. However, EBM’s attempts to replace subjectivity with precise empirical methods are problematic when clinicians must negotiate between scientific medicine and patients’ experience. This problem is evident in the case of bibliotherapy (patient reading as treatment modality), a practice widespread despite its reliance on anecdotal evidence. While EBM purports to replace such flawed practice with reliable evidence-based methods, this essay argues that (...) its aversion to subjective language prevents EBM from effectively evaluating bibliotherapy or making it amenable to clinical and research governance. (shrink)

Telling tales and reading have been a part of human activity for a very long time. We review in brief the anthropological evidence, then the emergence of the 'modern novel'. This explores in narratives the psychological reflections of the characters concerned with life circumstances including loss, abandonment, despair, illness, dying, and death. We report findings that the response of crying to a novel occurs as often as to music, not reported before: both 'move us'. We note what several critics and (...) authors imply about the imagined world of 'novel space' which emphasizes the active not passive nature of reading dramatic action, the latter being embedded and embodied within us. This touches on the mind–brain problem. We provide a brief introduction to neuroscientific work with brain imaging revealing how cerebral networks to do with theory of mind and brain structures that are the basis of our movements are involved with the very act of reading words and narratives. Emotional tearing is an exclusive attribute of Homo sapiens, and crying can have positive benefits for mental health. We argue that bibliotherapy needs greater attention than has been the case at present. We also suggest that telling tales and the 'modern novel' are closely allied to the development of the consciousness of Homo sapiens. (shrink)

유학자는 유학의 전통에서 근본적으로 수양론을 토대로 하는 수기치인(修己治人)을 학문목표로 삼는다. 여기서 말하는 수양론은 개인적 차원의 내면적 심성 수양과 사회적 실천을 포함하고 있다. 이러한 경향은 조선중기 때 대구권을 중심으로 활동한 유학자로서, 이황과 조식을 중심으로 한 영남학파의 학통을 계승하고 있는 한강 정구의 경우에서도 확인할 수 있다.BR 본고에서는 퇴계학과 남명학의 도통을 계승하면서 자신만의 학파를 형성하였던 정구의 삶과 학문정신을 살펴보고 그 속에서 독서치료적인 함의를 살펴보는데 목적을 둔다.BR ‘독서치료(bibliotherapy)’란 문학작품을 매개로 독자의 심리적 문제를 해결하고 도와주고자 하는 치료방법으로서 문학작품을 매개로 하여 독자에게 치료적인 도움을 주는 (...) 것을 말한다. 독서치료의 원리는 ‘동일화(identification) – 카타르시스(catharsis) - 통찰(insight)’의 세 단계로 이루어져 있다.BR 정구는 경의사상을 중심으로 자신의 학문정신을 형성하였으며, 특히 경전을 통한 수기 치인의 자세를 중시하였다. 그러한 과정에서 경전을 통한 독서의 중요성을 강조하고 있는데, 이는 정구의 학문정신에서도 치유적인 성격을 확인해 볼 수 있다.BR 그리고 유학에서 강조하는 수기치인의 면모는 정구가 임진왜란을 겪는 과정에서 구체화 된다. 임진왜란은 조선 사회에 크나큰 혼란을 초래한 사건이다. 이에 정구는 자신의 제자들과 함께 그 혼란한 상황 속에서도 자신이 경전을 통해 배운 성현의 가르침을 현실 속에서 구현하고자 하였다. 그것이 바로 수신의 외적 실현이라고 본 것이다. 그러한 노력들은 의병을 조직하고 외세에 저항하는 과정에서도 발견된다. 그 속에서 그들은 임진왜란이라는 고통과 갈등 상황을 회피하지 않고 극복하기 위해 적극적으로 저항하면서 삶의 의미를 발견하고자 하였다. 이처럼 정구의 학문은 유학 본연의 실천성을 회복하고자 평생 동안 노력하였으며, 이러한 그의 실천철학적인 모습은 치유적 사유를 통해 접근할 수 있다고 할 수 있다. (shrink)

This article explores the therapeutic potential of narrative fiction during a global health crisis. We focus on The Decameron Project (2020), a collection of short fiction by writers from around the world, commissioned by the New York Times Magazine. The Decameron Project references the narrative framework established by Giovanni Boccaccio in the mid-14th century, when the Black Death devastated Europe. Drawing on aspects of psychoanalytic theory and principles of bibliotherapy employed since the Middle Ages, we argue that The Decameron (...) Project offers strategies to simultaneously confront and contain the anxious mind. Storytelling, according to both Boccaccio and to the editors of The Decameron Project, is not merely a source of distraction but a means of survival. (shrink)

Suffering, defined as a state of undergoing pain, distress or hardship, is a multidimensional concept; it can entail physical, psychological and spiritual distress that prompts the sufferer to seek medical attention. As a construct originating from and unique to each patient, no patient’s suffering is equal to another’s or completely reducible to any generalizable frame of understanding. As it happens in a common medical encounter, the suffering patient requires an anamnesis provided by attentive and comprehensive listening to both the said (...) and unsaid parts of his or her discourse interpreted through the hermeneutical skills of the physician. Suffering can then be decoded into a complex construct, which can guide the formulation of a strategy to help patient coping by attempting to find meaning in it. To help this search for meaning, one may employ philosophic therapy, bibliotherapy and counseling, among other approaches. Suffering-based medicine (SBM) thus circumvents the limitations of the reductionistic Allopathic medical frame of understanding of disease. Such an attitude should be a common goal for all scientific medicine practitioners, as it complements and does not conflict with any of its therapeutic modalities. Furthermore, medical education should include humanistic disciplines to empower physicians to better understand their patients’ experience of suffering. (shrink)

Building upon the insights of scholars attuned to story, narrative, and myth, this article explores the relationship between myth, science, and religion. After clarifying the interplay of the three terms—story, narrative, and myth—and the preference for the term myth, this article will argue that myth can serve as a medium through which religion, neuroscience, and mental well‐being interact. Such an exploration will cover the role of myths in religion, the neurological basis of myth, and the practices of narrative psychology and (...) bibliotherapy. The article will conclude with suggestions for understanding and utilizing the relationship between myth and the scholarly study of the relationship between science and religion. This article ultimately suggests that myth can operate as a methodological aid to the science‐and‐religion field. (shrink)

In this article the background, development, therapeutical value and praxis of film therapy in Christian counselling will be addressed. The second part of the article shows what the scenery beyond film therapy may look like and how this form of therapy may extend to other areas of digital and electronic media in the current counselling and pastoral care praxis. Postmodernity, as the context within which the society finds itself, is discussed, as well as the place of films in postmodernity. The (...) important use and application of narratives in the postmodern era is discussed. Film therapy’s development as an outgrowth of bibliotherapy is explained. It is further shown how film therapy as a tool in the praxis of therapy may provide the ideal atmosphere for learning, enjoyment and edification. The scope of the article also reaches beyond the current use of film therapy by suggesting the use of other social and electronic media in a therapeutical way as an ever-increasing possibility. The article ends with some pointers in the use of film therapy. (shrink)