Bibliotherapy in existential psychotherapy: a hermeneutic phenomenological exploration

Background:
Bibliotherapy uses literature to facilitate the psychotherapeutic process, and therapeutic reading is often used as an adjunct to various psychotherapy modalities. The utilisation of books in psychotherapeutic treatment for the benefit and promotion of psychological well-being is well-established.

Aims:
This study aims to explore the use of bibliotherapy by existential psychotherapists who consider therapeutic reading an essential adjunct to their way of working. Specifically, I am interested in how existential psychotherapists experience the use of therapeutic reading with clients.

Method:
In-depth, face-to-face, open-ended/semi-structured interviewing via an online video platform was used to conduct the research. Recorded data was thematically analysed using van Manen's (2016a, 2016b) hermeneutic phenomenological approach.

Findings:
The literature review revealed bibliotherapy as successful in treating fluency disorder, anxiety-related disorders, and depression. The research highlighted that bibliotherapy is most efficacious when therapists deeply understand their client's problem and choose literature accordingly (Gerlach & Subramanian, 2016) and when used as a supplemental tool rather than an individual therapy approach (Heath et al., 2005). Participants of this study actively used bibliotherapy with their clients. Half of the participants identified with the term bibliotherapy, and half did not. Literature recommended to clients was based on the therapist's cultural context, background, training, and lifeworld. Recommendations were both spontaneous and targeted based on considered client therapeutic need, idiographic features, and symptomatology (Menninger, 1978).

Discussion:
This thesis contributes to the knowledge by bringing bibliotherapy in existential-phenomenological practice into focus for the psychotherapeutic and counselling psychology community. It demonstrates that with or without using the term, therapists are drawn to using literature in their work. Importantly, this thesis demonstrates through lived experience descriptions the contextual nature of how books enable the existential-phenomenological practitioner to co-explore, co-create, and co-construct meaning with their clients.