Books that will help you find yourself

Reading is the process of endless identification of yourself with the text or its heroes. That's why it can be therapeutic. The psychologist Nadezhda Chelomova tells how the bibliotherapy works, and offers a selection of artistic and non-fiction literature that helps them find themselves and reveal their potential.

Bibliotherapy as a therapy of reading certain books has been known since ancient times. Greek works were aimed at thinking about basic things and experiences: about fate (or, as we can say now, about vocation), about love and hate, about family life, about self-development through overcoming and testing.

Fiction for centuries of its existence has accumulated a large layer of "cases", life situations and the experience of heroes in their passage. It would be a pity they would not use it.

In foreign bibliotherapy, three stages of the therapeutic process are distinguished:

• Identification with the text or the hero of the text.

• Catharsis (emotional relaxation) in response to the text.

• Awareness of the problems presented in the text, and how this can be used in the reader's real life.

What is good for this type of development for a person: there are no specific actions imposed in the book (what must necessarily be done in reality), there is a general meaning of the text and each reader will take from there something of his own.

Unfortunately, there is no absolute guarantee that the book will help to solve the problem completely, the processing process can take a long time. However, if you select a book on the subject of the request, there is a high probability that the reader will have new ideas, thoughts, options for solving his problem and, of course, a sense of support and that he (a) is not alone in his question.

One of the frequent queries: what to read for self-realization, finding your own way (vocation, purpose in life, interesting work, etc.). Let's try to look at this request from different sides with a selection of suitable art and non-fiction literature.