Bibliotherapy

RECOMMENDED READINGS — AN OCCASIONAL FEATURE

Often, when we struggle with difficult mental health issues, it helps to help to read about them. We can learn how others deal with them, and at the very least we can learn that we’re not alone in our struggles. So, the staff of Counseling and Mental Health Services (CMHS) has put together a reading list that students could find useful.

The list contains fiction and nonfiction alike. Selections are arbitrary—such a list could easily contain a thousand titles—but these are books we thought might be of special interest.

1. Roddy Doyle: The Woman Who Walked into Doors
   (Fiction) A moving, horrific but sometimes very funny book about a woman trapped in an abusive relationship, and her attempts to extricate herself from it
2. Wayne Dwyer: Pulling Your Own Strings
   (Nonfiction) A therapist’s discussion of such issues as assertiveness, refusing to be victimized, and establishing appropriate boundaries with others
3. Carrie Fisher: The Best Awful
   (Fiction) An actress’s autobiographical novel that concerns her bipolar disorder and substance abuse
4. Viktor Frankl: Man’s Search for Meaning
   (Nonfiction) A psychiatrist who survived Auschwitz describes his experiences there, and his efforts to find meaning amidst unspeakable conditions
5. Hannah Green: I Never Promised You a Rose Garden
   (Fiction) A classic novel—written in the 1970s but still relevant—about a young woman with schizophrenia
6. Caroline Knapp: Drinking / A Love Story
   (Nonfiction) A woman’s candid story of her alcoholism, her protracted denial of it, and her eventual recovery
7. Harold Kushner: When Bad Things Happen to Good People
   (Nonfiction) A rabbi’s deeply personal exploration of how we try to make sense of tragedies in our lives
8. Steven Levenkron: The Best Little Girl in the World
   (Fiction) A novelist who is also a psychotherapist writes about anorexia
9. Deirdre N. McCloskey: Crossing / A Memoir
   (Nonfiction) A professor’s account of her own transgender issues, which culminated in her sex-change operation
10. Tim O’Brien: In the Lake of the Woods
    (Fiction) O’Brien’s novel about a Vietnam veteran is a powerful picture of posttraumatic stress disorder
11. Doreen Orion: I Know you Really Love Me
    (Nonfiction) A psychiatrist’s recounting of how a patient stalked her
12. Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar
    (Fiction) Better known as a poet, Plath also wrote an autobiographical novel that gives an unflinching account of her own battles with depression
13. William Styron: Darkness Made Visible
    (Nonfiction) The novelist who wrote Sophie’s Choice, Styron also wrote this brief but eloquent book about his depression