Transformative Words: Writing Otherness and Identities

This book is about the transformative functions of words, literature, writing, and biblio/poetry therapy, approaching the subject through narrative and cultural psychology, storytelling, and shareable meaning making. The dialogic mind is described as trembling in a textual web of memories, metaphors, fantasies, transferences and poetic language, and even revising the different versions of the unconscious. The backgrounds, aims, methods, and processes of biblio/poetry therapy are elaborated by presenting how storying the self and the writing of otherness and identities enhance personal development, attune emotionally, autobiographically, and socially meaningful experiences, bridging knowledge and emotion and supporting growth and transformation. Juhani Ihanus, PhD, is Adjunct Professor of Cultural Psychology (University of Helsinki), and Art Education and Art Psychology (Aalto University). He is a pioneer of European biblio/poetry therapy, and a prolific author for over 450 publications in the fields of psychology, culture, literature, and visual arts.