🧠 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
A haunting portrait of depression, perfectionism, and the silent collapse of identity.
The Bibliotherapy Shelf
A reflective reading space where books meet psychology.
Welcome to the Bibliotherapy Shelf — a curated collection of reading companions that explore the psychology behind your favourite books. Each book is paired with a short, science-informed guide that highlights emotional patterns, behaviour themes, and thought-provoking insights.
Use this shelf to deepen your reading experience and reflect on how stories mirror the mind.
Instructions
- Choose a book below
- Click to open the psychological companion
- Read insights, answer reflection prompts, and grow your self-awareness
These are not therapy — but they are rooted in real psychology and built to help you feel, think, and connect more deeply.
🏛 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
Themes: Morality, guilt, elitism, groupthink
📖 The Book Thief – Markus Zusak
Themes: Loss, resilience, the psychology of death
💸 The Psychology of Money – Morgan Housel
Themes: Emotional spending, risk perception, financial behavior
👴 A Man Called Ove – Fredrik Backman
Themes: Grief, loneliness, rigid thinking, rehumanization
🔬 Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
Themes: Existential grief, denial, mortality
🗝 The Silent Patient – Alex Michaelides
Themes: Trauma, repression, psychopathy, silence as defense
🎭 If We Were Villains – M.L. Rio
Themes: Performance, loyalty, identity, guilt under pressure
🖼 The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
Themes: Vanity, moral decay, shadow self
🔴 Surrounded by Idiots – Thomas Erikson
Themes: Personality types (DISC), communication breakdown, cognitive bias
🧠 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
💡 Psychological Summary
A poetic, raw portrayal of depression in young adulthood. The novel explores emotional paralysis, perfectionism, and the collapse of identity under social and internal pressure.
🔍 Key Psychological Themes
| Theme | Description |
|---|---|
| Major Depression | The protagonist’s spiralling loss of energy, interest, and purpose |
| Perfectionism | A distorted belief that one must excel in all domains to be “good enough” |
| Societal Role Pressure | Conflict between prescribed gender roles and internal desire |
| Disconnection | Feeling alien in one’s own life, numbness, and passive self-observation |
🧠 Reflective Prompts
- When do I feel like I’m “supposed” to be someone I’m not?
- Have I ever felt pressure to succeed in every role — and what did that cost me?
- How do I treat myself when I’m not feeling “productive” or “perfect”?
📎 Bonus Insight
Plath’s writing mirrors symptoms aligned with DSM-5 criteria for Major Depressive Disorder, offering a fictional but accurate window into lived experience.
Try This: Read with your own inner critic in mind. Underline passages that feel familiar and journal on them after.
Plath’s writing mirrors symptoms aligned with DSM-5 criteria for Major Depressive Disorder, offering a fictional but accurate window into lived experience.
Try This: Read with your own inner critic in mind. Underline passages that feel familiar and journal on them after.
🔗 Further Reading
Related title: My Year of Rest and Relaxation – Ottessa Moshfegh
Podcast: “The Psychology of Perfectionism” (The Happiness Lab)
⚠️ Content Note:
This book includes descriptions of depressive episodes and suicidal thoughts. Read with care.
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This book includes descriptions of depressive episodes and suicidal thoughts. Read with care.
👴 A Man Called Ove – Fredrik Backman
💡 Psychological Summary
This quietly powerful novel explores how grief, rigidity, and loneliness can mask deep emotional pain — and how connection, purpose, and patience can begin to heal it. Ove’s emotional transformation is a study in depression masked by irritability and the life-affirming impact of small human interactions.
🔍 Key Psychological Themes
| Theme | Description |
|---|---|
| Masked Depression | Ove’s bitterness and rigidity reflect symptoms of hidden depression, often overlooked in older adults or men. |
| Grief & Prolonged Loss | His behaviors and worldview are shaped by unresolved grief and loneliness following the death of his wife. |
| Suicidal Ideation | Ove’s early actions suggest passive and active suicidal thoughts, shown with both sadness and dark humor. |
| Community & Rehumanization | Reluctant connections with neighbors offer small moments of emotional reactivation and belonging. |
🧠 Reflective Prompts
- Have I ever mistaken someone’s coldness for “just who they are” instead of asking why?
- How do I express grief — do I shut down or seek out others?
- When do I feel most useful or needed — and how does that affect my emotional state?
📎 Bonus Insight
Ove’s emotional shutdown reflects a type of depression often overlooked: masked or agitated depression — especially common in people who cope through control, routine, and stoicism. His story gently invites us to see irritability as a potential cry for care.
Try This:
Write down one person who feels “hard to reach” in your life. Then ask: What might be hiding underneath their behavior?
Ove’s emotional shutdown reflects a type of depression often overlooked: masked or agitated depression — especially common in people who cope through control, routine, and stoicism. His story gently invites us to see irritability as a potential cry for care.
Try This:
Write down one person who feels “hard to reach” in your life. Then ask: What might be hiding underneath their behavior?
🔗 Further Reading
Related title: The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry – Rachel Joyce
Podcast: “Why Grumpy People Might Just Be Hurting” – Hidden Brain
⚠️ Content Note:
This book discusses grief and includes multiple suicide-related scenes, though presented with sensitivity and dry humor.
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This book discusses grief and includes multiple suicide-related scenes, though presented with sensitivity and dry humor.
📘 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
💡 Psychological Summary
This atmospheric, cerebral novel explores how intellect, elitism, and group loyalty can distort morality. It slowly unravels the psychology of guilt, justification, and the human capacity to rationalize violence. Through the lens of a cloistered academic clique, The Secret History reveals how identity and conscience bend under the pressure of belonging.
🔍 Key Psychological Themes
| Theme | Description |
|---|---|
| Groupthink & Moral Disengagement | The group’s choices are shaped by conformity, shared delusion, and the suppression of ethical responsibility. |
| Cognitive Dissonance | Characters experience internal conflict between their actions and self-image, leading to denial or rationalization. |
| Idealization & Identity Loss | Richard’s desire to belong causes him to sacrifice his personal identity in favor of a collective persona. |
| Narcissism & Superiority Bias | The group’s sense of intellectual elitism fosters moral detachment and justifies harm in the name of higher ideals. |
🧠 Reflective Prompts
- Have I ever silenced my discomfort to stay accepted in a group?
- When do I justify behaviors I wouldn’t tolerate from others?
- How much of my identity has been shaped by those I admire or idealize?
📎 Bonus Insight
The Secret History offers a near-textbook narrative of groupthink — a psychological phenomenon where loyalty to the group overrides moral judgment and critical thinking. The novel also illustrates moral disengagement, a concept developed by psychologist Albert Bandura, where people disconnect ethical reasoning from their actions.
Try This:
Think about a time you followed a decision because “everyone else was doing it.” How did it feel — and what might you do differently now?
The Secret History offers a near-textbook narrative of groupthink — a psychological phenomenon where loyalty to the group overrides moral judgment and critical thinking. The novel also illustrates moral disengagement, a concept developed by psychologist Albert Bandura, where people disconnect ethical reasoning from their actions.
Try This:
Think about a time you followed a decision because “everyone else was doing it.” How did it feel — and what might you do differently now?
🔗 Further Reading
Related title: Lord of the Flies – William Golding
Article: “Why Smart People Do Dumb Things in Groups” (Psychology Today)
Tool: Emotion Regulation Toolkit → Try “Reframe the Thought”
⚠️ Content Note:
This novel includes scenes of substance use, elitism, psychological manipulation, and murder, often handled with emotional detachment. It’s intellectually intense and morally ambiguous.
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This novel includes scenes of substance use, elitism, psychological manipulation, and murder, often handled with emotional detachment. It’s intellectually intense and morally ambiguous.
📘 The Book Thief – Markus Zusak
💡 Psychological Summary
Narrated by Death and set against the backdrop of Nazi Germany, The Book Thief is a story of resilience, grief, moral conflict, and the quiet power of language. Through young Liesel’s eyes, we witness how trauma imprints on children, how relationships can be lifelines, and how meaning is often created in the middle of destruction.
🔍 Key Psychological Themes
| Theme | Description |
|---|---|
| Grief & Complicated Loss | Liesel loses multiple caretakers and friends, experiencing repeated trauma with little time to process. |
| Moral Development | The story contrasts innocence with growing awareness of injustice and human cruelty. |
| Meaning-Making Through Language | Books and words become a form of emotional regulation, identity construction, and survival. |
| Resilience in Childhood | Liesel adapts, bonds, and emotionally endures through play, relationship, and storytelling. |
🧠 Reflective Prompts
- What’s something that helped you feel safe when the world didn’t?
- Have you ever used reading or writing to make sense of a painful moment?
- How do stories shape your beliefs about what’s right, wrong, or possible?
📎 Bonus Insight
Psychologists have long observed that children process trauma differently than adults — often through metaphor, roleplay, or narrative. Liesel’s attachment to books mirrors a core coping mechanism called symbolic resilience — the ability to create emotional safety through imagination and story.
Try This:
Choose a favorite childhood book. What comfort or message did it offer you then — and does it still?
Psychologists have long observed that children process trauma differently than adults — often through metaphor, roleplay, or narrative. Liesel’s attachment to books mirrors a core coping mechanism called symbolic resilience — the ability to create emotional safety through imagination and story.
Try This:
Choose a favorite childhood book. What comfort or message did it offer you then — and does it still?
🔗 Further Reading
Related title: Life After Life – Kate Atkinson
TED Talk: “The Psychology of Storytelling” – Karen Eber
⚠️ Content Note:
This novel includes themes of war, death, child bereavement, and anti-Semitic violence. While handled with care and beauty, it may be emotionally intense for some readers.
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This novel includes themes of war, death, child bereavement, and anti-Semitic violence. While handled with care and beauty, it may be emotionally intense for some readers.
📘 The Psychology of Money – Morgan Housel
💡 Psychological Summary
This accessible behavioral finance book goes beyond money management tips to examine how human emotion, memory, fear, ego, and bias shape our financial behavior. The Psychology of Money shows that wealth is not just about logic — it’s about psychology, personality, and lived experience.
🔍 Key Psychological Themes
| Theme | Description |
|---|---|
| Cognitive Bias | We often make money decisions based on emotion or stories, not data. Anchoring, confirmation bias, and loss aversion frequently show up. |
| Time Perspective | The way we view the future (long-term vs. short-term thinking) dramatically affects our financial decisions. |
| Behavior Over Math | Financial success is more about consistency, discipline, and avoiding big mistakes than technical knowledge. |
| Comparison and Identity | Social comparison and ego distort how we spend, save, or invest — often at the cost of our peace or values. |
🧠 Reflective Prompts
- Do I see money as safety, power, freedom, or something else entirely?
- When has emotion — not logic — driven my financial choices?
- What belief about money have I inherited that may no longer serve me?
📎 Bonus Insight
Housel argues that how we behave with money matters more than what we know. This aligns with behavioral economics, which recognizes that humans are predictably irrational when it comes to money. Financial decisions are deeply emotional — and often tied to our upbringing and worldview.
Try This:
Track every impulse purchase for a week. Then ask: What emotion was I feeling at the time?
Housel argues that how we behave with money matters more than what we know. This aligns with behavioral economics, which recognizes that humans are predictably irrational when it comes to money. Financial decisions are deeply emotional — and often tied to our upbringing and worldview.
Try This:
Track every impulse purchase for a week. Then ask: What emotion was I feeling at the time?
🔗 Further Reading
Related title: Your Money or Your Life – Vicki Robin
Podcast: “Why We Buy Things We Don’t Need” – Freakonomics Radio
⚠️ Content Note:
While not emotionally intense, this book may prompt reflection on past financial mistakes or family conditioning around money. Approach with curiosity, not judgment.
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While not emotionally intense, this book may prompt reflection on past financial mistakes or family conditioning around money. Approach with curiosity, not judgment.
🔬 Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
💡 Psychological Summary
In this quiet, unsettling novel, Ishiguro explores what it means to be human in a world that denies autonomy, love, and a future. Beneath its dystopian surface lies a story about repression, passive resignation, attachment, and the grief of lives unlived. The emotional weight of Never Let Me Go comes not from action — but from all the emotion left unspoken.
🔍 Key Psychological Themes
| Theme | Description |
|---|---|
| Repression & Emotional Avoidance | The characters rarely express grief, fear, or anger — a survival strategy that mirrors how trauma can lead to numbness or overacceptance. |
| Attachment & Disconnection | Early relationships offer security, but the characters’ later lives are marked by increasing emotional distance and quiet despair. |
| Existential Grief | The inevitability of death and the lack of life choices generate a grief that is never directly named — only lived through. |
| Institutional Trauma | The system that raises and uses the students reflects how dehumanizing institutions suppress individuality and critical thought. |
🧠 Reflective Prompts
- Have I ever accepted something painful because I believed I had no choice?
- Where in my life have I stayed quiet about grief — even when I needed to feel it?
- What roles or systems have shaped how I express (or suppress) my emotions?
📎 Bonus Insight
The novel captures a form of learned helplessness — a psychological state where people stop resisting harmful circumstances because they’ve been conditioned to believe nothing will change. This is common in environments of chronic powerlessness or emotional suppression.
Try This:
Write a letter you were never allowed to send — to a person, place, or system that made you feel powerless. You don’t have to share it. Just name what couldn’t be said.
The novel captures a form of learned helplessness — a psychological state where people stop resisting harmful circumstances because they’ve been conditioned to believe nothing will change. This is common in environments of chronic powerlessness or emotional suppression.
Try This:
Write a letter you were never allowed to send — to a person, place, or system that made you feel powerless. You don’t have to share it. Just name what couldn’t be said.
🔗 Further Reading
Related title: The Giver – Lois Lowry
Video: “The Science of Learned Helplessness” – CrashCourse Psychology
⚠️ Content Note:
This novel includes themes of mortality, powerlessness, and emotional suppression. It may evoke feelings of grief or existential reflection.
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This novel includes themes of mortality, powerlessness, and emotional suppression. It may evoke feelings of grief or existential reflection.
🗝 The Silent Patient – Alex Michaelides
💡 Psychological Summary
A suspenseful psychological thriller centered on a woman who stops speaking after committing a violent act, The Silent Patient explores themes of trauma, repression, attachment, and the mind’s defenses against unbearable truth. Through dual narratives, it questions how much of our behavior is shaped by what we’re unwilling — or unable — to confront.
🔍 Key Psychological Themes
| Theme | Description |
|---|---|
| Selective Mutism / Trauma Silence | Alicia’s refusal to speak may reflect an extreme form of emotional shutdown tied to unresolved trauma. |
| Repression & Denial | Both Alicia and the narrator bury painful truths, revealing how repression can distort identity and perception. |
| Attachment Wounds | Early emotional injuries — abandonment, betrayal — play a central role in the characters’ development and emotional reactivity. |
| Projection & Transference | The therapeutic relationship blurs as the narrator projects his unresolved issues onto Alicia, clouding ethical boundaries. |
🧠 Reflective Prompts
- When have I shut down instead of speaking up — and what was I trying to protect?
- What past hurt might still shape how I react to trust or betrayal today?
- How do I respond to others’ silence — do I try to fix, control, or understand it?
📎 Bonus Insight
In trauma psychology, silence is not always passive — it can be a form of survival. Alicia’s mutism may symbolize a subconscious refusal to revisit trauma or surrender control. The novel also shows how unprocessed trauma can resurface in identity-threatening ways when not addressed safely.
Try This:
Write about a time you kept something in because it felt unsafe to speak. What were you afraid would happen if you had shared it?
In trauma psychology, silence is not always passive — it can be a form of survival. Alicia’s mutism may symbolize a subconscious refusal to revisit trauma or surrender control. The novel also shows how unprocessed trauma can resurface in identity-threatening ways when not addressed safely.
Try This:
Write about a time you kept something in because it felt unsafe to speak. What were you afraid would happen if you had shared it?
🔗 Further Reading
Related title: Verity – Colleen Hoover (similar themes of silence and trauma, though darker)
Article: “Why We Go Quiet: Trauma and Communication” – Psychology Today
⚠️ Content Note:
This novel includes depictions of violence, emotional trauma, manipulation, and mental health treatment. It also includes themes of betrayal and abandonment.
⬅ Back to Bibliotherapy Shelf
This novel includes depictions of violence, emotional trauma, manipulation, and mental health treatment. It also includes themes of betrayal and abandonment.
🎭 If We Were Villains – M.L. Rio
💡 Psychological Summary
Set in an elite Shakespearean acting conservatory, If We Were Villains examines the blurred boundaries between performance and identity, loyalty and guilt, art and reality. Through an unfolding mystery, it explores how deep emotional repression, group allegiance, and unspoken love can twist perception and self-worth — especially when everything is filtered through the lens of a role.
🔍 Key Psychological Themes
| Theme | Description |
|---|---|
| Identity Enmeshment | The characters lose the ability to distinguish between who they are and who they perform — a common risk in high-intensity group dynamics. |
| Group Loyalty vs. Morality | The fear of losing belonging leads to ethical silence and shared complicity, echoing real-world dynamics of peer pressure and moral compromise. |
| Suppressed Emotion & Unspoken Desire | Romantic and personal truths go unspoken, creating internal pressure that leaks out in distorted, performative ways. |
| Guilt & Narrative Rewriting | The narrator’s guilt is processed through storytelling, revealing how memory and emotion can shape — or distort — the truth. |
🧠 Reflective Prompts
- When have I prioritized belonging over being honest — with others or myself?
- Have I ever played a “role” so well that I lost touch with what I actually felt?
- What part of my life am I narrating in a way that protects me — but isn’t fully true?
📎 Bonus Insight
Psychologists studying performance and identity (like Erving Goffman) suggest that we all play social roles — but when those roles are rigid or idealized, they can obscure emotional authenticity. This novel offers a fictionalized lens into how unacknowledged feelings and group identity can mask deeper psychological conflict.
Try This:
Pick one “role” you often play (e.g., the dependable one, the funny one). Write what that role hides — and what it might protect.
Psychologists studying performance and identity (like Erving Goffman) suggest that we all play social roles — but when those roles are rigid or idealized, they can obscure emotional authenticity. This novel offers a fictionalized lens into how unacknowledged feelings and group identity can mask deeper psychological conflict.
Try This:
Pick one “role” you often play (e.g., the dependable one, the funny one). Write what that role hides — and what it might protect.
🔗 Further Reading
Related title: The Secret History – Donna Tartt
Essay: “The Masks We Wear: Identity, Emotion, and Performance” – Psychology Today
Tool: Emotion Regulation Toolkit → Try “Reframe the Thought”
⚠️ Content Note:
This novel includes depictions of murder, repressed sexuality, guilt, emotional abuse, and imprisonment. Themes are mature and emotionally complex.
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This novel includes depictions of murder, repressed sexuality, guilt, emotional abuse, and imprisonment. Themes are mature and emotionally complex.
🖼 The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
💡 Psychological Summary
Oscar Wilde’s only novel is a dark, philosophical tale about vanity, self-deception, and the cost of denying one’s inner truth. As Dorian remains outwardly perfect while his hidden portrait decays, the novel becomes a metaphor for psychological repression, the shadow self, and moral disintegration. The Picture of Dorian Gray is not just about immortality — it’s about what happens when we try to escape accountability for who we are.
🔍 Key Psychological Themes
| Theme | Description |
|---|---|
| The Shadow Self (Jungian Psychology) | Dorian’s portrait represents the parts of himself he represses — guilt, lust, cruelty — which only grow stronger in the dark. |
| Moral Disintegration | As Dorian distances himself from consequence, his ability to feel remorse erodes — showing how conscience can decay over time. |
| Narcissism & Identity Fixation | His obsession with youth and appearance masks a fragile self-concept, feeding grandiosity and denial. |
| External vs. Internal Validation | Dorian’s downfall begins when he prioritizes how others see him over how he actually feels — a recipe for self-alienation. |
🧠 Reflective Prompts
- What part of myself do I avoid looking at — and why?
- When have I focused on how I appear rather than how I actually feel?
- What might I be keeping “in the portrait” — hidden, but still shaping my life?
📎 Bonus Insight
Carl Jung described the shadow self as the part of us we deny, suppress, or project — but which still lives within us. In Dorian’s case, the portrait literally absorbs his shame, guilt, and aggression, mirroring how psychological suppression often leads to self-destruction if left unacknowledged.
Try This:
Draw or write about your “inner portrait.” What emotions or truths might live there that you’re afraid to reveal?
Carl Jung described the shadow self as the part of us we deny, suppress, or project — but which still lives within us. In Dorian’s case, the portrait literally absorbs his shame, guilt, and aggression, mirroring how psychological suppression often leads to self-destruction if left unacknowledged.
Try This:
Draw or write about your “inner portrait.” What emotions or truths might live there that you’re afraid to reveal?
🔗 Further Reading
Related title: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
Article: “Carl Jung and the Shadow” – The School of Life
⚠️ Content Note:
This novel includes themes of moral decay, hedonism, emotional detachment, manipulation, and death. While metaphorical, it may resonate deeply with those exploring repressed identity or self-worth.
⬅ Back to Bibliotherapy Shelf
This novel includes themes of moral decay, hedonism, emotional detachment, manipulation, and death. While metaphorical, it may resonate deeply with those exploring repressed identity or self-worth.
🔴 Surrounded by Idiots – Thomas Erikson
💡 Psychological Summary
This engaging, color-coded framework simplifies personality communication styles using the DISC model — helping readers understand why people behave, speak, and react so differently. While not a diagnostic tool, Surrounded by Idiots encourages emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and perspective-taking, especially in conflict-prone or frustrating interpersonal situations.
🔍 Key Psychological Themes
| Theme | Description |
|---|---|
| Behavioural Communication Styles (DISC Model) | People tend to display dominant patterns: task-focused vs. people-focused, introverted vs. extroverted — influencing how they handle feedback, stress, and connection. |
| Projection & Misattribution | We often judge others’ behaviour based on our own emotional filters, leading to misunderstanding or frustration. |
| Cognitive Flexibility | The ability to shift your style or adjust your response is a core part of healthy social behaviour and emotional maturity. |
| Empathy Through Difference | Recognizing that people process the world differently builds tolerance, reduces blame, and enhances team dynamics. |
🧠 Reflective Prompts
- Who in my life frustrates me — and could it be a style difference, not a moral flaw?
- When do I expect others to behave just like me — and why?
- What’s my natural communication style… and how might it be misread by someone opposite?
📎 Bonus Insight
Though simplified, the DISC model reflects real patterns in social psychology: we all have preferences in how we express, decide, and relate. Erikson’s model can serve as a mirror — not a box — inviting curiosity instead of judgment. Growth starts when we stop taking differences personally.
Try This:
Choose a recent frustrating conversation. Reread it through the lens of “style mismatch.” What might change if you assume they weren’t wrong — just different?
Though simplified, the DISC model reflects real patterns in social psychology: we all have preferences in how we express, decide, and relate. Erikson’s model can serve as a mirror — not a box — inviting curiosity instead of judgment. Growth starts when we stop taking differences personally.
Try This:
Choose a recent frustrating conversation. Reread it through the lens of “style mismatch.” What might change if you assume they weren’t wrong — just different?
🔗 Further Reading
Related title: Emotional Intelligence – Daniel Goleman
Quiz: “What’s Your DISC Type?” – Free online tools (with disclaimer)
⚠️ Content Note:
This book simplifies complex personality science. It’s helpful for reflection but should not be used to label others or replace clinical understanding. Use with self-awareness and flexibility.
⬅ Back to Bibliotherapy Shelf
This book simplifies complex personality science. It’s helpful for reflection but should not be used to label others or replace clinical understanding. Use with self-awareness and flexibility.
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