Well, someone in your family and mine may need therapy, but not the British (they're British!) An odd project came to light recently in relation to the awarding of the Booker Prize. It's for the best book of fiction produced in the Commonwealth and Ireland. There's a prize each year, and the list of winners in recent years is known as the Short List.

A Times of London writer named Nick Wyke looked for practitioners in bibliotherapy, a field still looking for credibility as a discipline in the United States. After having identified a group of seven practitioners in Yorkshire using bibliotherapy to treat depression and substance-abuse, he asked them first to compare bibliotherapy to other strategies.

His informants mostly had patients referred by teachers, librarians, social workers, occupational therapists, and psychiatric nurses. The bibliotherapists themselves are often former teachers and librarians. They all said bibliotherapy was faster and more social (patients are seen in groups, and often over lunch). One such practitioner named Sheila Graham is quoted as saying she now sees patients suffering from schizophrenia, Alzheimer's, early dementia, and depression.

Wyke interviewed Dr. Jonathan Evans of Bristol University's psychiatry department, and asked if bibliotherapy could really cure depression. The answer was more cautious: "For depression I would recommend a more structured self-help book, with work exercises; but there's no harm in reading ANNA KARENINA."

Each bibliotherapist was then asked evaluate the Booker Short List and identify, if possible, the most useful of the titles. They agreed: their top choice was the most recent prize-winner VERNON GOD LITTLE, by the Irish writer D.B.C. Pierre. Its very safe (for a non-American) hero is a Texas teenager caught up in horrific violence.

Its publisher's synopsis says: "In the town jail of Martirio, Texas...15-year-old Vernon Little is in trouble. His friend has just blown away 16 of his classmates before turning the gun on himself. Vernon has become the focus of the whole town's need for vengeance, and the media's appetite for sensational content--true or not."

So there's mass murder and satire, and the sure-fire Americans as targets. SALON's Laura Walker comments: "It's not a plausible book...what it doesn't reflect with any authority is America itself. It's a synthetic concoction of artificial flavors and colors....it doesn't sound American, it doesn't sound, Texan, and it doesn't sound teenage."

What's a bit more disturbing is that searching on "bibliotherapy" here and now yields a similar mish-mash of quasi-medical do-it-yourself psychiatry. Back in May of 1989 there was "Bibliotherapy: Does it Work?" in the Journal of Counseling and Development: it simply recorded interest and said that so far there was no empirical validation.

In June there was "Bibliotherapy: a Tool for Helping Preschool Children Deal with Developmental Change Related to Family Relationships," in Early Child Development and Care. It was a modest discussion of 52 books that focus on the family.

Also that Spring there was "Will the Real Bibliotherapist Please Stand Up?" in the Journal of Youth Services in Libraries. It discussed the needs of librarians working with children, and suggested helpful resources.

In the past decade there have been a few American articles discussing the emergence of bibliotherapy, all blurring lines among disciplines. There have been one or two that claim it is a new discipline; but, in this country, we can hope interest has largely fizzled. Not so, apparently, among our island colleagues, especially with the latest Booker Prize offering a boost in credibility. I'm sure we'll hear mo