Reading, Literature, and Psychology in Action

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Background

‘Psychology in Action’ is a term coined by the Guest Editors from the Centre for Research into Reading, Literature and Society (CRILS), University of Liverpool, in their work in filming, recording and analyzing shared reading groups, led by The Reader organization. It refers both to the work of psychology within literary texts and to the responses of multifarious reader-participants to literature read live and aloud in small community groups within a variety of settings. In particular, ‘psychology in action’ has meant seeing readers suddenly activated into deep personal thinking, responding to situations imaginatively simulated by reading literature in ways that trigger surprised and involuntary emotion, autobiographical memory and spontaneous empathy.

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Shared reading settings include libraries, schools and looked-after children, GP drop-in centres, prisons, care homes, drug and rehabilitation centres, and facilities for people living with psychosis, with autism, with chronic pain, as well as on-line. For the range of reading benefits in different contexts and across the lifespan, see Reading and Mental Health, ed. Josie Billington (Palgrave Macmillan 2020).

The aim is to take the study of reading beyond initial issues of literacy

(1) To consider the effects of reading literature, alone as well as in groups, on mental health and wellbeing— in terms of emotional articulation, active and involved contemplation of existence, and a creative sense of human difficulty, complexity, meaning and purpose.

(2)To investigate the relation of the reading of literature to the present formal study of psychology — testing and deepening the force of top-down theories and conceptual frameworks by immersion in literary simulations of specific real-life predicaments, with mutual benefits to both the study of literature and the practice of psychology.

This Research Topic will ask how far or in what way the reading of literature may be therapeutic precisely by not being a programmed therapy, and by what methodologies this potential value may be investigated. It will consider what is to be done with psychological and existential problems that cannot be cured as such, but may need to be alternatively considered outside a medicalized context. It will involve thinking about forms of meaning and understanding that go beyond diagnostic categories.

The editors welcome innovative, unconventional and risk-taking contributions to explore this new cross-disciplinary area of human study.

Suggested topic-areas include (but are not restricted to):

- Reading groups and their procedures (e.g. live or reading-in-advance, novels not poetry etc)

- Solitary reading

- The therapeutic value of reading literature as an informal and unprogrammed form of therapy

- Bibliotherapy, including the potential difference between reading literature and reading non-literary content (e.g. newspapers or self-help books)

- Comparisons between therapeutic benefits of reading groups and the uses of more formal interventions such as CBT

- The present uses of literature from the past, including centuries prior to the 20th and 21st centuries

- Education of children in literature

- The benefits to children and parents/carers of reading together

- The challenge of bringing the reading of literature to hard-to-reach communities, including disadvantaged communities, communities of diverse or distinct ethnicity, as well as drug and rehabilitation centers, and prisons

-Reading and neurodiversity

- Neuroimaging and other physiological studies of reading (e.g. eye tracking, ERP etc.)

- Methodologies for use in live reading sessions and for testing the value of literary reading

Keywords: Reading; Bibliotherapy; Shared Reading; Reading Groups; Poetry, Novels and Short Stories; Mental Health; Hard-to-Reach

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