The use of poetry in the treatment of emotional dysfunction

Abstract

It is especially in recent decades that we have come to witness the phenomenon of a burgeoning use of the arts in p~chotherapy. Art, dance, music and poetry today serve as structured elements in a diversity of therapeutic settings, poetry and music therapy being possibly the first to benefit from the imprimatur of the psychiatric establishment. We are informed by Robert Jones, present director of the Pennsylvania Institute, that music and poetry were introduced to the Institute as ancillary treatment by Dr. Benjamin Rush in the middle of the eighteenth century. Jones further advises us that poetry therapy has been in consistent use at the Pennsylvania Hospital for nearly two centuries.’ 2 Examining the significant features of the creative modalities it can be seen that in their several aims and techniques each could readily serve as a paradigm for the others. The curative force of each derives from the healing factor implicit in the aesthetic impulse, and each in a seemingly oblique approach is addressed to the emotional locus of the patient and to the frequently disguised core of his dysfunction Fundamental to the foregoing therapies is the security of a non-threatening, non-judgmental, noncompetitive arena where the subject is free to discharge his hostilities and congealed resentments. Neurosis is generally understood as a disease of feeiing and it is in the area of feeling that the arts most distinguish themselves. The target in every case is the thinkingfeeling pattern and the suppressed and inhibited part of the self in treatment. It has been suggested that its non-verbal aspect is what gives music therapy its potency and value and permits an expression of the patient’s feelings which is healthful as well as socially acceptable.’ This virtue is shared by art and the dance while poetry therapy, it seems, is entirely dependent on language. However, since rhythm, tone, rhyme, chant and sound contribute so strategically to the sense of the poem, the poem’s non-lexical elements are of enormous consequence to its meaning. As a result poetry shares with the other aesthetic modalities this particular advantage, and like them addresses the emotions not with words alone, seeking thereby to contact the subconscious, personal and secret stratum of the patient’s mind. Bibliotherapy, a close relative of poetry therapy, and not unknown to the ancients, has recently been defined as “a process of dynamic interaction between the personality of the reader and imaginative literature as a psy~holo~c~ field, which may be used for personality assessment, adjustment, and growth.“r 5 This definition is closer to current concepts than an earlier one by K. G. Appel in Psychiatric Therapy where bibliotherapy was described as “the use of books, articles, pamphlets, etc. as adjuvants in psychiatric treatment, “serving” chiefly as a means of acquiring information and knowledge about the psychology and physiology of human behavior.“2 Although biblio~erapy is now understood to have been an ancient practice, poetry therapy in its oral use predated bibhotherapy since it was incorporated