Bibliotherapy is the art of prescribing fiction for life’s ailments.
As a bibliotherapist, I choose fiction that has relevance to your life, your reading habits and your situation, in order to help, to heal or to provoke.
I have worked as a bibliotherapist at The School of Life, one to one in person or by remote video calls, for over 10 years. I’ve helped hundreds, if not thousands of people to find the right books for their stage in life. I’ve also taken bibliotherapy around the world, to places such as India, Sicily, the Emirates, and the United States. I love talking to people in all kinds of places, and finding the right book for them at the right time of their life.
In a bibliotherapy consultation with me, you’ll explore your relationship with books up to now, and I will sketch your unique reading identity. From there, I will guide you to books that put a finger on feelings you may often have had, but perhaps never clearly understood before. I will prescribe you books that open new perspectives, shed light on your life, and re-enchant the world for you.
Time for books
I will also help you to think about ways of reading that bring more book-time into your life; where, how and with whom do you read? How might this constructively be changed to let more reading time into your day or night? And it’s not just time, it’s the quality of reading time too - I help you to think about how to get the most out of every reading opportunity. We can also talk about deep reading, audiobooks, keeping a reading notebook, and other ways of transforming your reading experience for the better.
How it all began
I started the bibliotherapy service at The School of Life in 2007 with my friend and colleague, the novelist Susan Elderkin. The idea sprang from talking about being Book Doctors when we were in adjacent rooms at Downing College, Cambridge. Ten years later we chatted to Alain de Botton about bringing a bibliotherapy service to his new venture, The School of Life.
Starting with one-to-one sessions in the School of Life Shop in Bloomsbury, I now hold consultations virtually around the world: Singapore, Sydney, Hong Kong, New York, Brazil, as well as live sessions at festivals, congresses, literary events, schools, universities and workplaces.