Use of Bibliotherapy in the Treatment of Grief and Loss: A Guide to Current Counseling Practices

✍ Scribed by Cynthia A. Briggs; Dale-Elizabeth Pehrsson

• Publisher: American Counseling Association
• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 155 KB
• Volume: 7
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1524-6817
• DOI: 10.1002/j.2161-0029.2008.tb00041.x

✦ Synopsis

Grief is a complex and dynamic process influencing individuals of all ages.

This article provides an overview of historical and contemporary constructs of grief counseling. Bibliotherapy, a creative counseling tool, is presented as an appropriate intervention when counseling grieving clients. Guidelines for using bibliotherapy with grieving clients are considered.

Grief and loss related to death and non-death-related incidents often cause significant stress, psychological trauma, and emotional distress including depression or anxiety (Servaty-Seib, 2004). Grief over the loss of a loved one creates some of the most frequent and difficult problems individuals face. In fact, "the death of a spouse ranks first out of 43 stressful events" on the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (Muller & Thompson, 2003, p. 183). Because of the complex and pervasive nature of grief, all counselors will face the challenge of treating grieving clients regardless of the counselor's professional milieu. One valuable intervention that may assist counselors working with grieving clients is bibliotherapy. This intervention is an adjunctive technique in which counselors use self-help or fiction literature to increase client awareness and promote client healing. To date, little has been written about bibliotherapy in conjunction with individual counseling (Floyd, 2003), and even less is found in database searches regarding grief therapy for adult clients. The aim of this article is to present guidelines for using bibliotherapy with grieving clients.

GRIEf COUnSELInG

Historical foundations

Freud first postulated that grief occurs when the libido remains attached to a lost object (person); thus, the goal of the griever was to detach from this object (Freud, 1957). In his opinion, grief, although a natural process, entailed sever-