A Really Good Book

The closest thing to free therapy is a really good book.

Fewer people, and especially fewer men, are reading for leisure these days. That’s a shame, but I myself am guilty of defaulting to the more immediate dopamine hit of screens and video games. Still, there are some deeper, richer things that only the written word can offer.

Reading in general engages your imagination more directly than watching TV, because your brain is supplying the imagery to go along with the words. A great deal of the human brain is dedicated to vision and image manipulation, and much of our thinking occurs at the imagistic level rather than the abstract. What’s more, a lot of our unprocessed memories exist mostly in the form of sensory and emotional information, both of which can be accessed and updated when using our imagination.

Carl Jung used a technique called ‘Active Imagination’ to push forward his own understanding of the human psyche and develop his famous ‘Red Book’.

Reading a novel might not feel like the same grand undertaking, but we can underestimate how much we identify with fictional characters and how much their struggles (and eventual triumphs) become our own.

A good novel will contain characters that have realistic problems and personalities. They will struggle both in their environments and within themselves. They will, in short, lead human lives, even if they are hobbits or aliens or vampires. And we can live those lives with them for the short time each day that we are engrossed in a good book.

And I emphasise ‘good book’ not ‘classic’ or ‘difficult’ etc. Some of my favourites books are classic and some of them are genre fiction, and some of them are nostalgic reads from when I was young.

What matters is that we are engaged with the fiction because that’s when our imagination will fire up, and everything we think we are getting from the page will actually be coming from inside us.