The day we were dogs: Mental Vulnerability, Shared Reading, and Moments of Transformation

TY - JOUR

T1 - The day we were dogs

T2 - Mental Vulnerability, Shared Reading, and Moments of Transformation

AU - Dalsgård, Anne Line

AU - Christiansen, Charlotte

PY - 2021/9

Y1 - 2021/9

N2 - This article builds on ethnographic fieldwork in shared reading groups for mentally vulnerable young people in Denmark. Shared reading is a technique in which prose and poetry are read aloud with breaks, allowing time for discussion. It is increasingly used in Denmark for mental health improvement. In our analysis, we employ Louise Rosenblatt's notion of the poem as event and the concept of Stimmung coined by the literary scholar Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht. Drawing on detailed examples from reading group sessions and interviews, we show how participants tuned into an atmosphere of presence that arose from the collective engagement in a literary text. Such moments of presence were significant events for the participants, whose everyday lives otherwise were marked by mental illness and a sense of being different from others. The transformation on which this article focuses relates to the brief disappearance of the troubling sense of self with which the young people had to contend daily.

AB - This article builds on ethnographic fieldwork in shared reading groups for mentally vulnerable young people in Denmark. Shared reading is a technique in which prose and poetry are read aloud with breaks, allowing time for discussion. It is increasingly used in Denmark for mental health improvement. In our analysis, we employ Louise Rosenblatt's notion of the poem as event and the concept of Stimmung coined by the literary scholar Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht. Drawing on detailed examples from reading group sessions and interviews, we show how participants tuned into an atmosphere of presence that arose from the collective engagement in a literary text. Such moments of presence were significant events for the participants, whose everyday lives otherwise were marked by mental illness and a sense of being different from others. The transformation on which this article focuses relates to the brief disappearance of the troubling sense of self with which the young people had to contend daily.

KW - youth, literature, temporality, atmosphere

KW - atmosphere

KW - momentary transformation

KW - reading

KW - FICTION

KW - EXPERIENCE

KW - SELF

KW - mental vulnerability

KW - SIMULATION

KW - youth

U2 - 10.1111/etho.12319

DO - 10.1111/etho.12319

M3 - Journal article

SN - 0091-2131

VL - 49

SP - 286

EP - 307

JO - Ethos

JF - Ethos

IS - 3

ER -