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A Bibliotherapy Evaluation Tool: Grounding Counselors In The Therapeutic Use Of Literature, D. Pehrsson, P. S. Mcmillen

Library Faculty Publications

The idea that the arts can benefit the emotional well-being of the observer, creator or reader has been around at least since Aristotle proposed the notion of emotional catharsis. Freud, on the occasion of his 70th birthday, acknowledged his intellectual debt to creative artists, suggesting that they, not he, had first discovered the unconscious (cited in Shrodes, 1950, p. 2). Certainly creative artists have become visible and valuable participants in the therapeutic milieu over the last century in the United States (Junge, 1994). Freud further suggested that, in the therapeutic process, “Storytellers are valuable allies and their testimony is to …