A Study on Emotional Healing Fiction for Undergraduate Students

Undergraduate students may encounter emotional disturbance when they are under pressures. Healing reading may effectively soothe negative emotions as the readers relate themselves to the fictional characters and life situations in the books. This study employs semi-structured in-depth interview to study 21 undergraduates’ experiences of emotional disturbances, the kinds of fiction they read when suffering from negative emotions, and the criteria for fiction selection. The result showed that academic studies, career planning and interpersonal relationship were the major problems causing emotional disturbances in undergraduates’ lives. The respondents read romance fiction, realism fiction and fantasy fiction when they encounter emotional disturbance. They chose based personal needs, book features, and recommendations from others. The findings may shed lights on how one may effectively conduct self-healing reading and how university libraries may do to provide better bibliotherapeutic services. [Article content in Chinese]