In the Company of Stories

Group Bibliotherapy and the Art of Facilitation

A story can bring people together without asking them to speak directly about themselves.

This module explores bibliotherapy in groups: how groups are formed, how they develop, how participants relate to one another, and how stories, poems, images, metaphor, and writing can create a shared space for exploration and reflection.

Bringing together group theory, group facilitation, and psychodynamic bibliotherapy, participants examine the particular possibilities and challenges of working with literary material in groups. They explore how to establish a group frame, create safety and containment, attend to group dynamics, and facilitate movement between individual experience and shared meaning.

The module considers the literary text as a mediating object within the group — something that can create distance and connection at the same time. A story or poem may allow participants to encounter one another through different perspectives, while writing can give individual experience a form that can be shared, witnessed, or held privately.

Across seven chapters, participants learn how to design, structure, facilitate, and reflect on bibliotherapy groups and workshops, with attention to different populations, purposes, and settings. Themes such as grief, trauma, identity, transition, resilience, and change are explored not as isolated topics, but as examples of the kinds of experiences that can emerge within group bibliotherapy.

Through theory, demonstrations, experiential group work, case material, and practical planning, participants begin to develop their own approach to creating and holding bibliotherapeutic group spaces.

What You Will Learn

• Foundations of group work — understanding group formation, development, roles, boundaries, norms, and group dynamics.

• The facilitator's role — creating a frame, establishing safety and containment, and responding to emerging group processes.

• The text as a mediating object — using stories, poems, images, and metaphor to facilitate connection without requiring immediate personal disclosure.

• Group bibliotherapy techniques — designing and facilitating literary and writing-based interventions for groups.

• From individual response to shared meaning — working with resonance, difference, dialogue, and multiple perspectives within the group.

• Writing in groups — using structured and expressive writing to support reflection, expression, witnessing, and connection.

• Working with emotionally charged material — considering trauma, grief, identity, transition, and loss within the group context.

• Designing bibliotherapy groups and workshops — developing aims, structures, session plans, reading material, exercises, and facilitation strategies.

• Reflective practice — learning to observe not only participants' responses to the text, but the evolving relationship between text, participants, and group.

Methodology

An integrated approach combining group theory, psychodynamic bibliotherapy, experiential group work, demonstrations, case studies, storytelling, close reading, and practical workshop design.

Participants will experience group bibliotherapy processes firsthand and will have opportunities to develop and facilitate bibliotherapeutic exercises while reflecting on the group dynamics they generate.

Course Structure

• 7 weekly online sessions, 2.5 hours each

• 35 academic hours, including guided independent study

• Curated readings and practical preparation

• Experiential group work and facilitated exercises

• Case studies and demonstrations

• Minimum 80% attendance

• Final presentation or reflective/practical project applying bibliotherapy principles to a group or workshop setting