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Bibliotherapy is a very broad term for the ancient practice of encouraging reading for therapeutic effect. The first use of the term is usually dated to a jaunty 1916 article in The Atlantic Monthly, “A Literary Clinic.” In it, the author describes stumbling upon a “bibliopathic institute” run by an acquaintance, Bagster, in the basement of his church, from where he dispenses reading recommendations with healing value. “Bibliotherapy is…a new science,” Bagster explains. “A book may be a stimulant or a sedative or an irritant or a soporific. The point is that it must do something to you, and you ought to know what it is. A book may be of the nature of a soothing syrup or it may be of the nature of a mustard plaster.” To a middle-aged client with “opinions partially ossified,” Bagster gives the following prescription: “You must read more novels. Not pleasant stories that make you forget yourself. They must be searching, drastic, stinging, relentless novels.” (George Bernard Shaw is at the top of the list.) Bagster is finally called away to deal with a patient who has “taken an overdose of war literature,” leaving the author to think about the books that “put new life into us and then set the life pulse strong but slow.”
Bibliotherapy certainly needs more recognition as the world is seeing more despondency and to my knowledge I don't know any lab made medicine can cure it.
Reading can def make you less depressed
not sure if it makes one happier
Reading is def therapeutic along with physical exercise
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For me, reading has always been something that has allowed me to escape from the real world and drown myself in the pages of a good book, novels, short stories, and it certainly makes you not want to stop reading.
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to be happier is it a state of mind ? or through an activity/food/alcool... ?
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Wiser but not happier. Better 2 read than bein' happy and ignorant.
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