The Healing Power of Poetry

Poetry therapy is used in mental health settings to support healing and personal growth. Patients read and write poems to practice mindfulness and relaxation, and poems can reveal work they can do within themselves. Poetry can open safe access to unconscious material that might otherwise feel frightening. Poems expand imagination by offering alternatives to the status quo and to chronic suffering. Each poem can create a parallel universe where new perspectives emerge. The healing connection between poetry and medicine appears across human history, from shamanic prayers and ancient Egyptian practices to biblical psalms and Roman medical recommendations. Later, hospitals and early psychiatry used reading and writing, valuing poetry’s emotional and cathartic power.

"Poetry therapy is often used nowadays in mental health settings for healing and growth. Patients read and write poetry to find new ways of being mindful or relaxed. Poetry can point to the work they can do on themselves. Poetry can open them to new ways of coping. A poem can lead safely into realms of the unconscious that might be frightening ordinarily. Poems open the imagination to see alternatives to the status quo or to chronic suffering. In fact, every poem takes us into a parallel universe."

"The realization that poetry has healing power is ancient in the human psyche. Shamans intoned poems as prayers that could bring help to the tribe or to individuals. In Egypt, as early as the fourth millennium B.C., poetry was inscribed on papyrus, dissolved in a solution and ingested by patients so that their illness might subside. We recall in the Hebrew Bible that David soothed the depression of King Saul with his singing of poems in the form of psalms."

"For many centuries, the connection between poetry and medicine remained in people's consciousness. Pennsylvania Hospital, founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1751, used bibliotherapy, reading, and writing as useful treatments for mental patients. Dr. Benjamin Rush, "Father of American Psychiatry," believed in the effectiveness of music and literature. In all these instances, the evocative power of poetry and the access poetry grants to emotions and catharsis were appreciated as paths to healing."

Read at Psychology Today