Literature therapy is a research-backed solution to anxiety and other mental illnesses. Therapy through literature is a rising field of study which uses books and literature as a therapeutic tool.
When I first started looking into literature therapy it was because it was something that I had experienced in my own life. I have always loved to read. When possible, reading is the number one way I spend my time. There is no better thrill than being placed into someone else’s life and discovering your own. That’s why I love reading. I love for other people to teach me how I feel by showing me how they feel.
This is the basis of literature therapy: that you can learn to understand your own emotions by reading stories. (Simply put, that’s how I view it)
I was at university when I started looking into literature therapy and realized that it was an actual research-backed solution to mental illness. During this time I was taking a European literature course and, while discussing this with my professor, was pointed to the story of John Stuart Mill.
John Stuart Mill was an influential philosopher and writer of the 19th century. In his autobiography he describes a mental breakdown which occurred in his early twenties. This state of mind left him depressed and completely incapable of work. A condition which no doubt could be diagnosed in today’s world.
After months of dwelling in despair, he is finally pulled out of this darkness. How does he overcome this despair? It is a passage of literature from William Wordsworth that ultimately frees him from this depression.
A.W. Levi in “The ‘mental crisis’ of John Stuart Mill” described that as Mill read that passage he realized he was once again capable of feeling, that literature allowed him to feel and connect to what was behind his depression and ultimately connect with his own inner thoughts.
In his own words John Stuart Mill described this experience in his autobiography:
“[W]hat made Wordsworth’s poems a medicine for my state of mind, was that they expressed, not mere outward beauty, but states of feeling and of thought coloured by feeling, under the excitement of beauty. They seemed to be the very culture of the feelings, which I was in quest of. In them I seemed to draw from a source of inward joy, of sympathetic and imaginative pleasure, which could be shared in by all human beings.”
More than a hundred years later, I am able to share that same experience as John Stuart Mill and feel the healing power that literature can offer. There are countless examples to be found throughout history, because the human experience is universal, and few things connect us better to it than our own stories.
If you’re looking for a story that speaks to you, check out our highlighted books for recommendations.