Abstract:

Its roots must be sought back in antiquity. They can clearly be traced in various healing practices applied in the Middle Ages to the present, but only in the first half of the nineteenth century lessons learned began to spread and specialized therapeutic programs started to be created. In the twentieth century, bibliotherapy was established and began to consolidate as a scientific field. It came out of the boundaries of its application only in clinical settings as a concomitant therapy in the treatment of the mentally ill. In the twenty-first century, it has a significantly wider field of application which is no longer confined to mental health, and is used for searching for emotional and mental balance, resolving emotional, social, intercultural and other kinds of problems. It is seen as providing emotional support through individual reading in the process of interaction with the text, which allows a person to recreate and find it in content which can help to find balance.

Bibliotherapy is a meeting point between the reader and reading, in which literary texts are used as an intervention strategy that affects people's quality of life, helping to experience traumatic situations and creating new mechanisms for dealing with and solving problems. Reading provides a feeling of freedom and is an opportunity to touch other different worlds in such a way that the reader's life is enriched with new situations.

Bibliotherapy is not a non-invasive approach, it uses shared and saved collective human thinking in the books as extraordinary therapeutic resource. It can be used for self-discovery, provoking situations that serve personal development, changes in relationships, development of values, understanding and acceptance of social norms, finding emotional balance, etc.

The report examines the therapeutic potential of reading for modern man during social isolation during a global pandemic. It presents the ways in which literature can help maintain and achieve emotional and mental balance in critical and unnatural situations for the individual.

Keywords:

Bibliotherapy, social isolation, global pandemic, emotional and mental balance.