A Different World? Literary Reading in Family Therapists' Personal and Professional Development Liz Burns and Rudi Dallos

r The Association for Family Therapy 2008.
Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington

Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
Journal of Family Therapy (2008) 30: 222246
0163-4445 (print); 1467-6427 (online)
A different world? Literary reading in family

therapists personal and professional development
Liz Burnsa and Rudi Dallosb
The importance of literature as a source of inspiration and enrichment

for therapy has long been acknowledged, but has not so far been
explored in detail via the experience of therapists themselves. This paper
presents aspects of a qualitative study exploring therapists views and
practices in relation to their reading of novels, plays and poetry. The
participants were senior family therapists actively engaged in clinical,
training and supervision contexts. The influences of literary reading were
identified in interview transcripts by means of thematic analysis. Effects
were noted in participants accounts of therapeutic practice and of their
personal/professional development and a creative relationship was seen
to emerge between the language of literature and the different worlds
experienced in literary reading. The relationship between the experi-
ential world of literature and that of therapy is discussed and implications
for practice considered.
Introduction
In our interactions with colleagues we have often talked about novels,
poems, plays or songs that have inspired us or that have helped us
make connections to the families with whom we work. Often these
conversations have been outside the formal family therapy context, for
example, in asides after a family have left, or over a much-needed drink
after the last session on a Friday afternoon. At times we also wondered
how reading might help generate our own abilities to be empathetic
and enter into domains of experience different from our own. Some-
times we exchanged examples of occasions when we introduced some
form of literature more directly into our work with a family. For
example, we explored with a family whether they ever saw themselves
as like a family in literature. On another occasion we asked family
a
Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Mental Health Trust CAMHS, Sue Nicholls
Centre, Manor House, Bierton Road, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire HP20 1EG, UK. E-mail:
liz@burns.myzen.co.uk.
b
Professor and Programme Director in Clinical Psychology, Clinical Teaching Unit,
University of Plymouth, UK.
r 2008 The Authors. Journal compilation r 2008 The Association for Family Therapy and Systemic Practice
Literary reading in family therapists development 223
members to bring along readings that they valued as a way to prompt a
different kind of conversation about themselves and their problems.
These thoughts led us to be curious about whether, and how, other
colleagues see a role for literature and reading in their work.
Reading, of course, can take many forms, from a leisurely distrac-
tion to a mentally energetic activity characterized by self-examination
and critical reflection. At which ever end of this spectrum we locate
our reading, we suggest that it invariably involves some active
dialogical or conversational process (Knights, 1995). Reading con-
sists of an interaction between the reader and the text in many
interrelated areas including the relation between the levels of mental
process (Bateson, 1972, p. 464). We have noted a relationship
between the production and consumption of literature and the
conduct of therapy, since both use language to frame and mediate
human interaction and transform experience, both above and below
the level of individual intention and consciousness. Literature has
played an important role for both of us, both directly and indirectly, in
our own personal and professional developments, so we were curious
to know more about the experience of other systemic family thera-
pists. What existing examples were there of the use of literature as an
aid to therapy? To what extent might other therapists draw on
literature to complement and support their professional development
and their potential as therapists?
Literature review
Surprisingly little has been written about its use, either directly with
families, or in the development and life of therapists. Dallos and
Trelfas paper (1993), in which Hamlet is used as a therapeutic focus, is
one of very few describing direct clinical use of literary topics or texts
in systemic therapy. There were also some examples of earlier papers
using literary texts as case material to illustrate or explore theoretical
points (Grolnick, 1983; Lipton, 1984; Bateman, 1985; Tuson, 1985;
Watzlawick et al., 1967; Vande Kemp, 1987; Wilkins, 1989; Johnson,
1990, 1993; Zuk, 1990; Burns 1995).
An important development, both in family therapy and more
broadly in psychology, has been the view that narratives or stories
are fundamental to the way in which we make sense of our experi-
ences (Bruner, 1986). For example, memories come to be seen as
stories and not schemas or concepts or pieces of information. Bruner
contrasts the power of narrative to evoke and connect human
224 Liz Burns and Rudi Dallos
experience with rational and scientific thought. Narrative has influ-
ence by virtue of the feelings and connections in our own lives that it
evokes, rather than by its rationality of argument. In contrast, rational
and logical arguments can have quite the opposite effect, inducing a
sense of dryness, or even boredom as opposed to connection. Bruner
also suggests that reading can foster our development, and, by
implication, our resources as therapists:
The function of literature as art is to open us to dilemmas, to the

hypothetical, to the range of possible worlds that a text can refer to . . . .
Literature subjunctivizes, makes strange, renders the obvious less so, the
unknowable less so as well, matters of value more open to reason and
intuition.
(Bruner, 1986, p. 159)
In their book Pragmatics of Human Communication Watzlawick et al.
(1967) use a play Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as a method of
presenting interactional communication which they say is possibly
even more real than reality. They chose a literary drama because it
captured aspects of complex human dilemmas and subtle commu-
nicational processes, lending itself to multiple interpretations while
also giving an insight into the dilemmas and possibilities facing the
participants depicted. Such material allows us to experience the
dilemmas of the characters, from the inside and the outside simulta-
neously, since the author offers us a glimpse into their inner thoughts.
This encourages us to consider the potential multiple meanings that
our clients hold and also how their thoughts and feelings may be
similar and/or different to our own. Literary reading may be seen as
helping us to broaden and enrich our narratives and to contemplate
alternatives, or even hypothetical future events, that can assist us in
our therapeutic work. As children we both remember reading books
which could not have been further from out actual lives, for example,
P.G. Wodehouses Jeeves stories and Enid Blytons Famous Five. In
spite of, or perhaps because of, their difference they encouraged us to
explore the interpersonal dilemmas, passions, anxieties, jealousies
which we shared with the characters. The connection we make with
these stories and characters allows us to operate in a sort of virtual
world. We can test different ideas, think about what we might have
done in the circumstances, guess at peoples motives and so on. One
bonus of reading traditional crime novels, for example, is that we get
to know whether or not we have hypothesized correctly about motives
who dunnit and why as the culprit is revealed.
We might say, then, that reading novels can alert us to the range of
possibilities inherent in our lives and the lives of those with whom we
work. The process that makes this possible is essentially metaphorical;
that is, we read and talk about a fictional story while actively thinking
about actual lives and transferring insights and emotional responses
from one to the other. Readers are obliged to make use of their
imagination and acknowledge the importance of this kind of explora-
tion. Poetry takes this further still, pushing the bounds of language, often
without the scaffolding of a recognizable narrative. In his Biographia
Literaria, Coleridge, the Ancient Mariner poet, sets out his project to:
transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of
truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing
suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith,
(Coleridge, 1817)
so that the fantastic supernatural happenings in his poems could be
experienced by the reader as meaningful in themselves. We think that
the combination of rationality and emotion which exists in the virtual
world of literature, where the imagination is allowed to play, is what
Bateson meant when he said that we should look to poets to show us
how to link different levels of mental process (Bateson, 1972 ). He also
wanted to highlight the importance of the reasons of the heart and
the role of emotions in thinking and action.
All this adds up to a state of mind in the reader, or the participant in
a therapeutic conversation for that matter, in which we can embrace
ideas and thoughts and contemplate issues and dilemmas without
feeling we have to reach a conclusion. This is the position, or state of
mind, to which the poet Keats referred when he said:
I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in
uncertainties, mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact
and reason.
(Keats, 1817)
This state of openness parallels the not knowing position advocated
by collaborative therapists (Anderson and Goolishian, 1992). In this
study the link is with ideas, emergent from the research data, of the
creative interaction between the language of literature and the
experiential different world (the two most influential of the theme
clusters described below) generated in literary reading. Bruner says
that the world created in the reading of literature is characterized by
subjunctivization, explaining that this derives from the subjunctive
mood, a grammatical term denoting an action or state as conceived
(and not as a fact) and therefore used to express a wish, . . . or a
contingent, hypothetical, or prospective event (Bruner, 1986, p. 26).
This view accords very well with the sense derived from our data that
the world of literary reading is full of possibility and potential.
Bruners thinking about subjunctivization is based on the ideas of
influential reader-response theorist Wolfgang Iser, about the nature of
speech acts. Versions of reader-response theory were developed in
the 1970s to address the relationship between the reader and the text.
These ideas continue to be important both in the study of literature and
in approaches made by cognitive psychologists to understand the
reading process (Miall and Kuiken, 1998, 1999). Unfortunately, poten-
tially fruitful theoretical and practical links to systemic work with
families have largely disappeared from the contemporary scene. Iser
says that meaning is generated in the space between the text and the
reader, by the activity of the reader guided by aspects of the text. He
specifically calls attention to the indeterminacy of texts which draws
the reader in and demands an interpretive response in which the
meaning of the text is generated (Iser, 1978). Michael White picks up
this theme to highlight the importance of the indeterminacy of stories
to generate meaning, in literature, as in lived experience:
just as these gaps in literary texts recruit the lived experience and the
imagination of the reader, so do the gaps in the stories that are lived by
recruit the lived experience and the imagination of people as they
engage in performances of meaning.
(White, 1992, p. 82)
This recognition of gaps in stories and the open potential of all lived
experience also alerts us to the dangers of rushing in during therapy
to provide closure, a happy or convenient ending or conclusion.
Self and other

Also vital are the notions advanced by attachment theorists about the
development of a sense of self in relation to others, especially as
articulated by Fonagy et al. (1991, 1994). Reflective self-function or
the capacity to reflect over personal and interpersonal issues and to
see others as people with mental states of their own (Marrone, 1998)
is seen as a developmental achievement. This capacity is the product
of attachment relationships and the social interactions which char-
acterize them. Fonagy et al. (1991, p. 203) go further: The world we
live in can only make sense if we invoke constructs such as wishes,
beliefs, regrets, values or purposes to understand the mental world of
the other as well as the self. The mind they say is interpersonal.
In attachment theory the parent initially helps the child to put her
feelings and experiences into words. This becomes increasingly more
sophisticated as the child learns to develop more complex stories and
stories that involve taking into account not only her own but also
others feelings and thoughts, along with a recognition of how these
might be different from her own. As children mature and language
use continues to develop, it is possible that literary reading may also
be a means of developing reflective self-function. It may be said that
a sense of self and other is a prerequisite of engaging imaginatively
with oral or written stories. Development of reflective self-function
may be especially facilitated in childhood reading which takes place as
part of a relationship with an adult. For example, adults may
intersperse reading a story with questions and answers about peoples
actions, feelings and intentions, and with added affect, humour,
questioning and explanations. Children may come to internalize these
processes so that their own reading becomes an active engagement
with the text. Arguably these kinds of reading experiences foster
reflective self-function and empathy.
This ability to contemplate multiple explanations of ones own, and
others, states of mind may be a key component in the development of
resilience. In attachment theory this is seen as an openness to both
positive and negative aspects of our experiences, along with a balanced
ability to see both positive and negative aspects of others actions.
Reading, as a means of facilitating virtual exploration of the world
and exposure to ideas free of some of the emotional tensions in
current relationships, may actually foster an open and potentially
balanced way of seeing events and others. Resilience is promoted
when we are able to draw on information available to us without
becoming stuck in narrow or fixed ways of seeing events, and when
there is openness to possibilities and multiple narratives.
Attachment may therefore be seen as a narrative phenomenon,
arising from the creation of coherent and satisfying personal and
shared stories of the individual in the social world. The means of
assessing attachment, with adults and older children, is based on verbal
representation and the eliciting of reactions to pictured or fictional
situations (Kaplan, 1984), thus linking attachment with literary read-
ing and raising the question of the role which their combination could
play in the enhancement of qualities of personal resilience and health.
Guiding propositions
Broadly we aimed to explore participants accounts of the relationship
between literature and therapy and their views on its potential to
enrich the development of family therapists and systemic practi-
tioners, and enhance the quality of their work. We believed that
engaging in literary practices, such as reading, writing and discussing
literature, could enrich therapeutic conversations, advancing personal
and professional development through the promotion of abilities
relevant for therapists, like empathy and appreciation of the experi-
ences of others. Accordingly, we set about asking colleagues to tell us
about their experiences, using a phenomenological viewpoint and
approaching the therapeutic encounter via therapists views and
accounts of their development.
We had a number of broad research aims and added to this some
more specific ideas that we hoped might be illuminated by the study.
We were interested to explore:
how experienced family therapists regarded the role of literature
in their clinical practice, for example, their direct use of it in
sessions or as part of a broader personal development;
whether these participants believed that literary reading could
develop the capacity in the reader for imaginative, hypothetical
thinking and feeling which is the basis for a sense of self and other;
whether they felt that therapy and reading were analogous activities
which, though distinct in setting and form (therapy is not reading
and reading is not therapy, although it may be therapeutic), have at
their core a process of social interaction and meaning-making
mediated through text/conversation which is transformative;
participants accounts of the construction of a social self based on
individual and shared reading experiences.
The study was also part of our personal journeys for one of us
(LB), from student of English to family therapist, and for (RD) who
was greatly helped by reading in his transition to English culture from
being a refugee.
Method
We chose four methods to explore the relevance and contribution of
literary reading to family therapists development: a Delphi study to
open up and begin to delineate the topic; interviews to follow up
Delphi themes in more depth; a group actively engaged in using
literary examples to facilitate personal development; a reflexive
commentary also using literary texts as inspiration for reflections
on, and explorations of, the growth of the research process. This
commentary was an attempt, within the qualitative paradigm, to set
out the position of the researcher and demonstrate reflexivity. It
found a place in the writing up of the research process and findings.
In this case, focused reflection on literary examples was chosen as an
appropriate illustration of the approach being explored. The use of
combined methods within an overall exploratory, qualitative frame
reflected the multi-layered and multi-perspective nature of human
experience. The assumption was made that meanings are constructed
socially between people through the medium of language. This paper
describes the interviews only.
The interview participants comprised eight senior members of the
family therapy community in the UK, experienced and knowledge-
able people who had already demonstrated an interest in literature
and literary reading. They had been part (8/10) of the panel for the
initial Delphi study. In this survey they had responded to open
questions about their literary reading at different times of their lives
and the significance they ascribed to it in their personal/professional
development and in their current clinical/supervisory/teaching/perso-
nal contexts. Their answers had been used to delineate the field of
enquiry and to generate questions for the interview schedule.
LB met each volunteer for approximately ninety minutes to conduct
a semi-structured interview. Participants were invited to talk about their
reading history (literary reading: novels, plays, poems and so on at
different points in their life so far) and the significance of this reading in
relation to their personal and professional worldview, understanding of
relationships and sense of self. In addition, participants were asked to
bring a piece of literature of their choice to reflect upon in relation to
the foregoing questions (chosen texts) and we provided some unseen
extracts, also for their personal and professional reflections (supplied
texts). This overall approach was in accordance with Interpretive
Phenomenological Analysis or IPA (Smith, 1995; Smith et al., 1999), a
qualitative research method which allows the researcher to attend to
both the text generated by semi-structured interviews and to ideas and
influences present in the context of the research.
The interviews were recorded, transcribed and subjected to a
thematic analysis. We found it necessary to include both explicit
material (directly answering the question How do you. . .? at the level
TABLE 1 Theme clusters
1 Different worlds/a different space?
2 Language of literature
3 Sense of self
4 Meaning in literature literature formulates the hitherto unformulated
5 What/how literature can contribute in therapeutic contexts
of technique), and implicit material (pertaining to broader therapist

characteristics and development) to convey the richness of the
accounts. Analysis of the transcripts was conducted predominantly
by LB alongside a comparative independent analysis of some of the
transcripts by RD. A reflective diary of the process of the analysis was
kept and the two of us discussed the emerging sub-themes to agree on
the final themes as best fitting the data.
The resulting thirty-eight categories were then grouped into five
thematic clusters (see Table 1).
1 Different worlds/a different space?

This cluster included references to the other world quality of read-
ing, thinking/talking about literature. This world is qualitatively
different from that of taking in lists of facts or following reasoned
arguments, although obviously these things can go along side by side.
It is imaginative, expansive/opening up, generative, playful. This
thematic cluster began to assume a dominant position as the analysis
proceeded, so it is illustrated in some detail.
For example:
X: A writer will take you up to another level of an experience . . . taking
you up to a much more metaphorical level.
Some literary forms, including science fiction, are specifically
concerned with elaborating explorations of different worlds. One
participant particularly appreciated this imaginative quest:
S: I like that because its mucking about with what if...? and lots of
different ways of interpreting this . . . so that always excites me.
She also uses different criteria to evaluate literary reading as opposed
to academic and/or scientific writing:
S: I can read that [literature] without getting grumpy if they make
claims, because the frame is always were making claims and you can
either read it or not!
The world of literary reading is full of possibilities and alerts the
reader at all ages to perspectives which are new and provocative of
fresh thoughts and feelings.
R: It was a lot of pleasure and maybe a bit of escape into a world that was
more interesting and richer than the one I was in.
Several interviewees recalled the vividness of childhood reading. This
participant recalls reading Jennings at School:
L: Boarding schools (I never went to one or wanted to go to one) seemed
exotic, lively places with comradeship and pranks.
Another found her childhood horizons broadened by reading Enid
Blytons Famous Five which:
M: Opened up a kind of middle-class world which I didnt know about
and wasnt part of . . . I could think thats different those arent the
things which are important to me . . . its a kind of opening up of
possibilities.
In talking about childhood reading, participants noted another
enriching possibility which continues to be part (potential or actual)
of literary reading up to the present:
A: Reading creates a world which a child can be in control of.
It can continue to be a tool at the disposal of the reader, as illustrated
below, where participants mention ways in which literary texts can
help to interrogate issues such as gender, culture, the significance of
research activities.
Most important, perhaps, is the rediscovery and reassertion of the act
of reading as fundamentally different from, but complementary to, other
aspects of human life. All participants accepted the value of training
activities more traditionally associated with the development of family
therapists but they also looked beyond the textbook and the here and
now of therapy supervision, for example, the understanding that:
X: Talking about literature needs a different kind of space,
with the implication that some dimensions of therapeutic conversation
also demand a different kind of space to flourish.
Another participant sums it up:
R: Novels create a space for different kinds of thinking, to be somewhere
else,
while yet another participant points to the creative potential
involved in something we all do, which is highlighted, for her, by
literary reading and reflecting on the writing of George Sand. This
was the pseudonym of a nineteenth-century French woman novelist
who wrote under a male name and also explored social situations in
male disguise, thereby gaining life experience which would otherwise
have been inaccessible to her:
M: All of us live in different worlds simultaneously . . . it highlights how

we keep the connections going between the two. . . . Children can
develop all sorts of ways of managing this . . . and some of them might
push them to a much more creative domain.
2 Language of literature
This was a grouping of diverse reflections around use of language.
Language is used to denote a wide range of verbal and non-verbal
(see below) communication, rather than what might be thought
of merely as poetic diction or a special sort of talk or writing only
to be found in poems or classic novels. Participants mostly talked
about literature written in, or translated into, English. Clearly, all
linguistic systems, like French, Mandarin, Latin, Jamaican patois
and so on, use language of literature in their own way. However,
here we are talking about study participants readings of literature,
rather than how linguistic systems work. Since the conscious and
artful use of language is basic to all literature, this section contained
some of the most salient responses and observations in the study.
As a category, it was also the repository of disparate and hitherto
unrefined thinking. It therefore contained exciting ideas which were
also difficult to capture.
Participants highlighted the ways in which particular arrangements
of words can influence personal meanings and shape social interac-
tions. Sometimes they were thinking of the words that give form to
common rituals, such as prayers, hymns and poems read at funerals.
One participant mentioned the power of a particular image, evoked in
Khalil Gibrans poem The Prophet, to define and enrich the concept of
marriage/coupledom:
But let there be spaces in your togetherness

And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
(Gibran, 1923/1995)
The respondent reported that this specific arrangement of words
formed an emotional and conceptual bond between her and others,
both in intimate and wider social networks.
Interviewees also identified the function of literary language to
express the universality of ideas and meanings which literature
encapsulates (Participant L). Particular verbal sequences can achieve
unique effects, as participant C says when she talks about the writing
of Toni Morrison: her extraordinary vision and facility for language
touch you in a way that is indescribable.
The language of literature was also seen as a focus of social
interaction in a more concrete way, for example, in terms of the
words and punctuation on the page. In written form it is relatively
accessible to a wide range of people and can provide a stable focus of
attention and discussion. The language of literature may, in itself,
have considerable cultural currency in a wide variety of social
exchanges. As an example, quotations from the works of Shakespeare
(1996) like I am a man more sinned against than sinning (King
Lear, Act 3 Scene 2 l.59), The wheel is come full circle (King Lear, Act
5 Scene 3 l.176), Brevity is the soul of wit (Hamlet, Act 2 Scene 2 l.93)
have passed in great numbers into everyday speech as common
sayings. As this participant says:
L: I think the justification for it [talking about literature in an FT training
context] is that other people can make contact with it too.
Participants were acutely aware that literary language has a powerful
character of its own:
X: Poetry alerts us to the inadequacies of language . . . poetry represents
a constant struggle for language.
This language operates not only through the words on the page but in
the shape, appearance and web of associations around the book itself.
For example:
T: The shelves were full of books with green stickers on . . . my grand-
mother collected them from the Boots library.
Books set out language in particular patterns and create categoriza-
tions which, for some people, last a lifetime:
T: On my seventh birthday I was given Arthur Mees Childrens
Encyclopaedia and I read everything cover to cover. It was divided into
geography, history, stories and poetry.
This participant was also entranced by the sound of the language of
literature:
I actually liked poetry. I used to sit and read it out loud to myself because
I liked the noise.
Participants described the experience of engaging with the language
of literature as an indissoluble combination of the words on the page,
the look and feel of books, the sound of the language and the social
circumstances of reading. This was an especially potent mix when
thinking about childhood reading. For example, this participant
associated the language of literature with solitary adventures and
stolen pleasures:
S: I used to read with a torch under the bedclothes.
On the other hand, closeness with a parent or older sibling was often
part of the picture:
W: I cant recall reading as a child without thinking about my dad, sitting
on his lap. Very warm and close and just for me.
Other participants, however, did not associate childhood experience
of the language of literature with closeness:
Q: I dont remember that anyone read to me, and spontaneously
registered the lack of being read to, or told stories, with sadness and a
surprisingly strong emotional reaction, even now.
3 Sense of self
This large cluster included perspectives on the role of narrative in
literary reading and of related practices such as skills in reading,
comprehension, writing, emotional engagement and the exercise of
imagination, in the formation of personal and professional identity.
For example:
L: Literature preceded therapy in my sense of self-awareness,
and I came to therapy almost as an application of literature and literary
ideas.
Another participant discusses a function of reading in the life of a
migrant child:
R: I sold myself as a bit bookish . . . so there was a sort of identity of being
someone whos a bit scholarly,
while another says:
M: I would have relationships with characters in the book!
The same participant, talking about current life preoccupations:
M: Reading is a very important contribution to the quality of my life and
almost becomes more important the busier I get.
4 Meaning in literature literature formulates the hitherto unformulated

This cluster contained not only meanings perceived through engage-
ment with literature but also those which may be generated in the
sharing of texts.
For example, one interviewee said:
X: Novels reveal what is often hidden about relationships. That is why
they are so important and necessary. Iris Murdoch, as an example,
reveals core human processes.
Literature can help to interrogate themes, for example:
M: Lady Chatterley was also important in my exploration of thinking
about the differences between mens and womens sexuality,
and:
C: I like this poem because its about . . . my work I think, qualitative and
quantitative research and the art of science.
5 What/how literature can contribute in therapeutic contexts

This cluster included ideas of how the introduction of a literary voice
(not necessarily the voice of the author) may actually facilitate more
collaborative conversations in a training context and in therapy, and
that literary texts (interpreted broadly: imaginative prose, poetry,
song lyrics, drama, film) can provide an instant externalization of
thoughts and, more particularly, feelings. This can facilitate sharing of
difficult or previously unformulated ideas, emotions and experiences.
It also contains some of the ways in which literary influences can be
implicit in clinical practice, through the self of the therapist. So:
X: Its about how you position yourself in relation to wider narratives.
M: Probably I dont use literature texts but I use peoples experience of
reading to convey a lot of ideas.
Participants were all very conscious of the dilemmas of using literary
resources in work with families who they think would not routinely
share reading preferences with the therapist. One participant suggests
a way through:
L: Where I think the persons acquainted with literature or drama or
even soap opera, I will use an example, say this seems to me like the two
of you are like something out of Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf? or you
two are like EastEnders or Neighbours . . . .
And Ill use well-known quotes (like Oscar Wilde But each man kills the
thing he loves) whether the person has any literary sense or not, if the
quote is apposite and simple enough. I think it helps to see that their
experience is not just personal experience thats unconnected to others
. . . that theres a universality of ideas and meanings which literature
encapsulates. They may find something of relevance there rather than
expecting a therapist to provide them with that.
Chosen and supplied texts: literary voices in the interview

The decision to include pieces of literary text in the interviews was
informed by experience of literary workshops prior to the current
study, which led us to believe that the presence of literary texts
themselves, and the close reading of these, may generate a more
creative focus than just talking about reading experiences. This was in
accordance with the ideas of reader-response theorist Iser, who
maintains that the text is able to take readers beyond their existing
frame of reference, emphasizing at the same time that the power to
transcend does not lie in the text to be discovered, but rather that the
text provokes response and orients the reader towards new under-
standings, thoughts and feelings (Iser, 1978, p.168). Our understand-
ing of this in the context of the interviews was that introducing the
actual text to be read aloud was like adding another richly creative
voice to the conversation.
The texts which participants brought with them were important
because they had been chosen for their power to evoke and define
personal experience. Finding a text to bring was a prerequisite which
set the tone of the interview, and had a particular effect on the
meaning of what was generated in discussion. In other words, the
framing of this mode of questioning is a matter of orientation and
interpretation. It cannot be entirely subsumed under the method of
semi-structured interviews (Smith, 1995), although some of the
material generated in the discussion of the chosen texts and the
supplied extracts was also included in the description of thematic
analysis. It creates another mode (another world to use the term
which emerged from this thematic analysis) within which to answer
the question.
Participants brought extracts from or reflections upon: The Prophet
by Kahlil Gibran (1923/1995); Reading in the Dark by Seamus Deane
(1997); Catch 22 by Joseph Heller (1955/1994); Long Days Journey into
Night by Eugene ONeill (1956/1998); The Railway Man by Eric Lomax
(1996); The Bone People by Keri Hulme (1986) and Lost in Translation by
Eva Hoffman (2001); The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot (1860/1994);
On the Nature of Scientific Law by Jenny Joseph (1999); Beloved by Toni
Morrison (1988) and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
(1984). These texts all had personal historical and contemporary
significance. One participant, M, says of her choice, Reading in the
Dark, that it emphasized how important reading was to me as a child,
how it was my interaction with the world.
She quotes from this chosen text:
M: And yet I kept remembering that mother and son waiting in the Dutch
interior of that essay, with the jug of milk and the butter on the table, while
behind and above them were those wispy, shawly figures from the
rebellion, sibilant above the great fire and below the aching, high wind
(Deane, 1997)
reflects this participants regard, not only for the ordinary Dutch
interior of life, but also for the multi-layeredness of personal experience.
Most people made the point that their choice could be different at
another time. This is an important acknowledgement that literature
can offer resonance and significance according to circumstances. The
cultural underpinning which it represents is accessible and flexible
over time and conditions. It is also an indication that the reflections of
the moment need to be interpreted in the light of the voices with
which they are in conversation, in this case the participant, the
researcher and the texts.
The supplied texts (short extracts from The Prophet by Kahlil
Gibran and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (1994) and complete
poems by Paul Durcan (1997) and Adrienne Rich (1971)) demon-
strated that the same text was capable of prompting multiple and
sometimes opposed responses. For example, Adrienne Richs poem
Desert as Garden of Paradise 4 (1971) was described by some as
thought provoking, moving and applicable to work with clients,
especially those who have survived abuse and deprivation, and by others
as too direct and therefore not very poetic. One person felt a little bit
preached at. Some people found it plain while one person found it
pretty. In the case of the interviews there was no opportunity for
participants to talk to each other to question, resolve or develop these
responses but the variety of positions suggests the basis of creative
conversation such as that explored in a later part of the study (the group).
Discussion
The interviews confirmed and elaborated our initial propositions in
the following ways:
Development of a capacity for imaginative and hypothetical think-
ing and feeling which is the basis for a sense of self and other.
Interview participants reported many instances in which literary
reading helped them to recognize and enter imaginatively into
situations and states other than their own. For some, this awareness
began in early childhood, when told, or read, stories. It developed
through reading exciting, absorbing tales which portray the experi-
ences of characters in other circumstances, e.g. Enid Blytons
Famous Five stories, which seem to have been read with huge
enjoyment by most participants. They recognized this imaginative
engagement in relation to human others (fictional/constructed char-
acters), but it also applied to situations and experiences. A good
example of this was the engagement of all participants with the extract
from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (supplied as part of the
interview schedule). This was identified as being about otherness,
expressed through a description of landscape, with connotations of
excitement and fear for the readers.
The processing of the Conrad extract as part of the interview
mirrors the use of reading techniques (identification of layers of
meaning, close attention to the effects created by language) to aid
understanding in therapy. Participants scanned the extract, making
an initial assessment (often an emotional connection), then going back
to look again for further significance. The meaning of the extract for
the reader increased in this iterative process, and the associations
evoked were capable of development in many directions. This
response to an evocative text, which is susceptible to multiple inter-
pretations, is a good model for therapist activity as part of therapeutic
conversation. Thus, close reading techniques engage the reader (or
therapist/client) actively in constructing meaning by combining
elements of the text with previous life experience.
Encountering otherness through literature has implications for
the development of self -consciousness, or feeling of personal iden-
tity, and for the capacity to recognize that others have a mental life
which is uniquely their own. The configuration of awareness of self/
other is analogous to the idea of reflective self-function proposed by
attachment theorists (Fonagy et al., 1991, 1994) and explored by
others, giving special weight to interpersonal manifestations (Mar-
rone, 1998). Recognition of, and feeling for, the interior personal life
of others is the essential prerequisite of hypothetical thinking about
others, which in turn is the basis of social intercourse and therapeutic
empathy. Five out of eight participants made direct mention that their
capacity to empathize was strengthened by literary reading, and we
were struck by the dependence of both empathy and reflective self-
function on the construction of narratives about relationships
(Kaplan, 1984; Main et al., 1985). An interesting question arises
here, suggested by the findings of the study and adding to the
proposal: might literary reading serve a function in mitigating the
effects of disrupted attachments in early life?
Thoughts of literary reading, reflective self-function and empathy
come together to suggest that an important generic function of literary
reading may be to help readers become more aware of their own
consciousness and the consciousness of others. This would have many
therapeutic uses where active sensitivity to the needs of others is
important, for example, between: young children and their caretakers;
parents and children in marital breakdown; adults and adolescents;
professionals and vulnerable clients; professionals in conflict.
The original proposition may be elaborated by highlighting the
importance of emotion and imagination which emerged to indicate
an experiential world in which the individual can appreciate the
experience of different possibilities from the inside. Our findings
suggest that emotion plays a major part in enabling people to enter
experiences in this way. This insight supports the idea that people
need to feel different in order to achieve therapeutic change, and
indicates a process through which this feeling of difference may be
facilitated. Our findings suggest that people engage with literature in
diverse ways. Some become more involved through story and char-
acter, while others were more affected by the form of language and/or
the visual images sparked by texts, and through the appearance and
symbolic quality of books. It is important, therefore, to expand the
notion of literary reading to include the experiential insights
provided by these study participants and to challenge the idea, rooted
in adherence to narrative as the primary method of engaging with
literature and life experience, that narrative is the only literary mode
which is relevant for therapy.
Construction of a social self based on individual and shared
reading experiences.
There was little dissent anywhere from positive views about the
contributions which literary experiences, past or present, can make
to the construction of relationships and social awareness. Interviews
were rich in examples of individual and shared reading (parent/child,
with family members, between friends, between trainees, and between
therapist and client) which enable the growth of social self , relational
ability and sensitivity to the personal experience of others.
The interviews in themselves were examples of the transferability
of reading experiences to other situations. Feedback from one
participant addressed the question of shared reading as a therapeutic
technique:
L: I am sure that talking about reading material and responses to the

material, as part of a cultural storehouse of resources (images, meta-
phors, symbols), could well facilitate understandings in therapy.
Participants reported that they had incorporated reading experiences
at different levels. Some felt they were fundamental to their sense of
self, while others saw them more as an added extra. This would seem
to have a qualitative bearing on the worldview and sense of self of
individuals whether in therapy (as therapists or clients) or not, and the
nature of the experience transferred between situations. There is
ample evidence here that literary reading can continue to contribute
in facilitating relationships and social awareness, throughout a profes-
sional career and beyond. Some participants made clear that they are
careful to set aside time and make mental space for literary reading
and for using literature for their own continuing development,
because they recognize that reading is a useful adjunct to their work:
M: The significance lies in the richness [literary reading] gives to our

emotional understanding/responses so we can hold many narratives in
our minds and be more alert to the forbidden, secret, crazy thoughts and
experiences that cannot be overtly told.
Other participants described an internal conflict about setting aside
time for literary reading because:
S: I meet my ethical guidelines by being informed by research [i.e. not by
reading a novel]
and/or
T: Feeling guilty when not reading work-related books.
However, one participant said:
L: I would like to see a whole new therapy course designed with core literary
texts at the centre and therapy tools developed through literary analysis.
This idea relates well to the practice, which is growing in medical
education, of including humanities teaching, including literature, along-
side more scientific and technical aspects of training (Philipp et al., 1996).
For several interview participants, however, the fact is that they are
now reading much less literature. One explanation given is that the
pressures of work seem to crowd out literary reading, which may
be seen as a self-indulgent or frivolous activity. Participants regularly
set aside time for work reading research papers and clinical topics
and the conflict expressed by participants is a significant hurdle to
be overcome if systemic practitioners are to feel able to make more use
of what they see as a significant enhancement of their therapeutic
practice. While participants expressed no doubts about the usefulness
of literary reading in relation to different stages of life, their own most
influential and potentially creative years (the current ones) tend to
be dominated by conventional professional concerns, often academi-
cally motivated. This proposition could be reframed to direct enquiry
towards the polarization of personal and professional concerns
for senior therapists and the impact this may have on their ability to
engage imaginatively with clients and trainees.
Therapy and reading as analogous activities.
This was a central question for this study. Participants indicated that
they saw both direct and more tangential connections between read-
ing and therapy. For example, participant L used quotations in
therapy, M got alongside her clients by referring to common
experience expressed in novels, and C saw life themes worked out
in literature. In these instances literature is incorporated directly into
therapy and both the therapist and family can engage in a consideration
of their feelings evoked and connections to their own circumstances.
When this is done in the context of therapy there is often the clear
implication that these considerations are an invitation to change.
However, there is also a transformative aspect of this, since the use
of literary texts in therapy can also produce a sense of being
simultaneously elsewhere. The awareness that we are in therapy can
melt into the background as both therapist and family become
immersed in the discussions. For one participant (R) this was like
entering another world with the family. In a sense they became the
players in Hamlet, not just discussing it as a text. An invitation to a
family to enter into the roles forges a connection between therapy and
reading, and can provide an enhanced and intensified experience.
Our primary theme of different worlds also captures an essential
part of the idea of therapy and reading as being analogous activities.
In reading a story we become involved in it and try to get inside the
world of the participants in the story. Participants said how, in their
readings, they were able to enter worlds which were very different
from their own. This is central to therapy: we meet with clients and
families who have backgrounds, experiences and attitudes that may
be very different from our own. As in literary reading we may even
anticipate that we may find their lives repellent. For example,
Shakespeares Richard III is initially encountered as a villain but we
may be drawn in so that we begin to have some empathy with his
wretchedness and some regard for the very outrageousness of his
actions. Richard III will never be a romantic character but he can be
played, and viewed, with a degree of sexiness!
Kafkas giant insect can evoke both sympathy and empathy (Kafka,
1916/2007) and also remind us of other similar metamorphoses, such
as that of the unfortunate (or possibly richly deserving) Seth Brundle
in David Cronenbergs 1986 film The Fly. When we work with people
who have committed child sexual abuse, for example, or domestic
violence, we may also feel repulsed, but therapeutic conversations, in
our experience, invariably lead us to see other aspects of people and
situations. Reading a range of literature can teach us, as our partici-
pants emphasized, that we can find ways to enter other peoples
worlds and be fascinated by their experiences even while recognizing
that they may be very different, and even opposed to our own.
Conclusions and further directions

We propose that family therapy theory and practice would be
enhanced by increased interest in literature and reading. This study
would have important insights to offer from the responses of the
interview participants. The proposition that literary reading and
therapy are analogous processes would be pivotal to this argument,
especially when extended to emphasize the importance of literary
features which promote particular feelings or states of mind in the
reader, and which alert us to the multiple layers of meaning inherent
in human experience.
Interviews produced a wealth of reading experience and revealed
that participants ascribed significant aspects of their personal and
professional development to their relationship with a wide range of
literature over time. Analysis of transcript texts showed that this
relationship enabled particular developments to take place in and
through the experientially different world created between the reader
and the literary text in the act of reading. The literary-ness of reading
material resides in the ability of its language to generate this fertile and
open world in the mind of the reader. While the words on the page
were foremost in opening up the possibilities of a different world for
these participants, their awareness and sensitivity could also be sig-
nificantly affected by the look and feel of books and the sound of the
language. The difference between reading for information and literary
reading was dependent upon the emotional/feeling connection estab-
lished and the images flashed upon the minds eye.
The concept of a reading history emerged as a remarkably
evocative way of tracing personal development. Participants reported
a powerful role for early reading (or being read/told to) in shaping their
sense of self and other. These histories of our reading, a sort of
reading lifeline, provoked strong and evocative memories in our
participants. We wonder whether this could become a helpful reflective
exercise in family therapy training programmes and also a useful
activity with families. Occasionally we have used this more directly in
our clinical work. For example, RD explored the reading interests of an
elderly couple where the wife was severely anorexic and depressed and
her partner equally depressed. His reading constituted books on steam
train engine characteristics and hers of romantic novels! Through an
exploration of their different tastes we were able to gently look at their
relationship, and they agreed, as an exercise, to surprise each other
with some different readings. He got her a book on needlecraft and she
found him a Thomas the Tank Engine book! We felt it was possibly the
start of some small change. For the first time in many sessions they both
laughed on getting their reading gifts! We also saw them in a new light
as having some fun in them and a bit of spice even a glimpse of the
sexiness that many years ago had produced two fine, now adult, sons.
Our research has had impacts on our own practices. For example,
RD has been able to incorporate the use of reading novels in his
teaching on the clinical psychology training course at Plymouth
University. For example, trainees have found it valuable to read
novels, such as Doris Lessings The Summer before the Dark, alongside
their more formal psychological texts in their preparation for clinical
work with older adults. They now also enthusiastically summarize (in
their reading logs) the novels they have read alongside the worthy
psychology tomes they are required to study. LB has continued to
explore what contribution can be made by reflections stimulated and
guided by literary texts to the personal and professional development
of family therapists, both trainees and established practitioners. She
also remembers, wherever possible, simply to ask what kinds of
novels, poems or songs clients enjoy, and she is often rewarded with
the kinds of answers which would not be forthcoming from most of
the other questions in her repertoire. Gloomy teenagers, for example,
can perk up considerably when interest is shown in their reading of
horror writers like Stephen King.
It has always been clear to us that some people do not read, and/or
have limited literacy skills. Others do not wish to read, perhaps
because of aversive experiences in their earlier lives. Inspired by
what we have found in this study, we feel that it is part of our job, as
therapists, to expand our own repertoires to connect with whatever it
is that others, be they colleagues or clients, find equivalently stimulat-
ing. This could be a simple extension of our own interest in song
lyrics, TV programmes, films or comics (all essentially literary forms)
or it could be the language of football, both the playing of the game
and talking about it afterwards. We need only to ask the questions that
make all this possible.
Finally, we conclude that a relationship between literary reading and
therapy is supported and the question of its scope and value needs
further attention. Reading is a holistic activity, engaging intellect and
emotions and providing language structures through which to develop
images and ideas generated in the engagement with the text. Therapeu-
tic conversations may be defined in the same way. Participants in this
study brought many examples of using literary resources such as poems
and extracts of novels to enrich therapeutic encounters but they also went
further and described their use of literary practices in clinical contexts,
such as close attention to the kind of language used in therapy, tracing
the development of themes and appreciating the multi-layeredness of
meanings in therapeutic conversations. Most important of all, however,
was the value we, the researchers and the participants, learned to accord
to the different world which is generated in literary reading and which
can provide a growing space for our therapeutic abilities and potential.
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A Different World? Literary Reading in Family Therapists' Personal and Professional Development Liz Burns and Rudi Dallos

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A Different World? Literary Reading in Family Therapists' Personal and Professional Development Liz Burns and Rudi Dallos

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r The Association for Family Therapy 2008.

Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington

A different world? Literary reading in family

Liz Burnsa and Rudi Dallosb

The importance of literature as a source of inspiration and enrichment

The function of literature as art is to open us to dilemmas, to the

Self and other

of technique), and implicit material (pertaining to broader therapist

1 Different worlds/a different space?

M: All of us live in different worlds simultaneously . . . it highlights how

But let there be spaces in your togetherness

4 Meaning in literature literature formulates the hitherto unformulated

5 What/how literature can contribute in therapeutic contexts

Chosen and supplied texts: literary voices in the interview

L: I am sure that talking about reading material and responses to the

M: The significance lies in the richness [literary reading] gives to our

Conclusions and further directions

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