Assessments of Therapeutic Potential in Fiction Made for the Purpose of Interactive Bibliotherapy at Public Libraries

This thesis examines the selection of fiction made by librarians for the purpose of interactive bibliotherapy. The informants were four librarians at public libraries in north and middle Sweden. Methods used were semi-structured interviews and directed analysis of content with a theory driven approach. The theoretical framework consisted of concepts of quality discussed by Elam (2002): value subjectivism, value objectivism and value relativism. It also consisted of two concepts from bibliotherapy research which were used as a continuum and by no means mutually exclusive. These concepts were realistic literature and literature that enables escapism. The concept and contextual meaning of realistic literature stems from the work by Shrodes (1950) whose model of the bibliotherapeutic process has dominated the understanding of the conditions for bibliotherapeutic effect to appear in bibliotherapy. The value of literature that enable escapism is emphazised by Brewster (2011) and has in recent research been brought forward by Pettersson (2016). The results can be understood from the viewpoint of bibliotherapy as a three-step process in which the literature selection, i.e. the middle step, partly depends on the first step (project description, target group) and partly on expectations of what primarily constitutes the therapeutic effect: the act of reading or the social dimensions of the meeting (the third step). The results showed tendencies towards selecting literature of high quality in an objective sense, but often for other reasons than this objective quality itself. Neither realistic nor escapistic characteristics appeared to be central for the selection, but rather literature that enable multiple interpretations and raise existential questions.