Effects of Bibliotherapy on the Self-Concept of Learning Disabled, Emotionally Handicapped Adolescents in a Classroom Setting

Learning disabled, emotionally handicapped adolescents maintain poor strategies for coping with exigencies of environment. Attempts to gain direct access to these problem areas for remediation often result in a defensive withdrawal and reinforcement of maladaptive techniques in dealing with stress. Bibliotherapy offers a method through which adolescents can observe parallel stresses at an affective distance and incorporate change without a direct threat to personal independence. The present study employed bibliotherapeutic techniques for two of four groups of learning disabled, emotionally handicapped adolescents. Administration of the Piers-Harris Children's Self-concept Scale shows a change in mean postintervention self-concept for the two groups under the bibliotherapeutic condition. Implications are discussed.