Word by word I write the night
Carving a mental movement within the pain through an encounter with a text

Course Description:

Mental pain is often experienced as a static state – a solid, frozen mass of sorrow, despair, fear, paralysis. Mental pain can include anxiety, depression, coping with loss, coping with life crises. Since 10/7/23, we have all been moving within a cloud of pain, consisting of grief, anxiety, rage, helplessness, and more. How can we, even within the depths of pain, carve paths of mental movement? Of connecting to forces, to hope? Mental movement occurs on several levels: both of finding meanings within mental pain, and of connecting to activity and action, and of observing additional perspectives, and of being there for significant others in our lives. An encounter with a literary text in dealing with mental pain can answer for us the question of creating meanings and giving words to pain; connecting us to creativity, action, and forces; allowing us to dialogue with different mental parts within us; and also allowing us to be for ourselves a benefactor through the encounter with the text as an external object. All of these enable the carving of mental movement within the pain. In the course "Word by Word I Write the Night – Carving Mental Movement Within the Pain Through an Encounter with a Text" we were exposed to the miraculous power of the literary text in a therapeutic encounter that allows the soul to find words for the pain and create movement within it.

Course objectives:

• To be exposed to expanding the possibilities of internal and therapeutic discourse – in emotional states of mental pain – through an encounter with a literary text and writing.

• Be exposed to a variety of literary texts that discuss different situations of mental pain and possible ways of working through them.

• Experiment and experience the practice of dialogue with text to create mental movement.

Teaching method:

Alongside theoretical thinking about the texts, participants will experiment with thinking about how they can work with the texts in the clinic to create emotional resonance and movement for patients, and will also experiment with dialogic self-writing with texts.

About the lecturer:

Dr. Lior Granot , bibliotherapy and poet. Treats adults in a private clinic in Tel Aviv using psychotherapy and bibliotherapy, teaches bibliotherapy courses for therapists and leads writing workshops and bibliotherapy groups. Teaches bibliotherapy in the Master's degree in social work with a focus on integrating artistic means in therapy at Bar Ilan University. She has published two books of poetry, a book in poetic prose, and a non-fiction book based on her doctoral dissertation in the Psychoanalysis and Interpretation program at Bar Ilan University: "How does the bibliotherapy clinic work? Writing, Childhood, Poetry" (Pardes and Bar Ilan University, 2020). For further reading:

www.bibliotherapy.co.il www.liorgranot.co.il