Literature, mental health and gender politics. Why we must remember that "She Wrote Too" with Nicola Morgan

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'm joined by Nicola Morgan, who some of you may know as the co-host of the fantastic She Wrote Too podcast and Substack. As well as a podcaster, Nicola is a positive psychologist, champion of women's writers, bibliotherapist, creativity specialist, tutor and mentor. She's properly multi hyphen, having been a former lawyer and teacher in past lives. She now uses that wealth of experience and passion to help others thrive through story and psychology. 

Full show notes and a transcript of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links for Nicola:

She Wrote Too Podcast:

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

She Wrote Too Substack

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

Reading list from Nicola, to support the topics discussed:

Positive Psychology & Purpose

• Seligman, M. E. P. (2011). Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being. - Introduces the PERMA model: Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishment.
• Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). "Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being." American Psychologist, 55(1), 68–78. - Central to understanding motivation in values-led work.
• Wong, P. T. P. (2011). "Positive psychology 2.0: Towards a balanced interactive model of the good life." Canadian Psychology/Psychologie Canadienne, 52(2), 69–81. - Explores how suffering and meaning-making are integral to authentic well-being.

Narrative Psychology & Meaning

• McAdams, D. P. (1993). The Stories We Live By: Personal Myths and the Making of the Self. - Key text on how humans construct identity and meaning through narrative.
• Neimeyer, R. A. (2006). "Rewriting the self: History, memory, narrative." In Meaning Reconstruction and the Experience of Loss. - Relevant to your interest in grief, healing, and story.

Bibliotherapy & Reading for Well-being

• Brewster, L. (2011). Health & Place, 17(2), 361–368. "The public library as therapeutic landscape: A qualitative case study." - Explores the healing power of books and libraries.
• Billington, J. (2016). Reading and Mental Health: Bibliotherapy Revisited. Palgrave Macmillan. -Central to bibliotherapy research and your work with She Wrote Too and Learn to Thrive.
• Montgomery, H., & Martin, B. (2015). "Literature and empathy: A study of bibliotherapy and reading groups." Medical Humanities, 41(2), 100–104.

How shared reading helps foster empathy and insight.

• Kidd, D.C. & Castano, E. (2013). Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind. Science, 342(6156), 377–380.
• Miall, D.S. & Kuiken, D. (2002). A feeling for fiction: Becoming what we behold. Poetics, 30(4), 221–241.
• Pennebaker, J.W. & Seagal, J.D. (1999). Forming a story: The health benefits of narrative. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 55(10), 1243–1254.
• Montgomery, D. & Maunder, R. (2015). Bibliotherapy: The Girl on the Train and other ways to self-soothe. BMJ, 351:h4465.

Legacy and Culture:

• Jerome Bruner (1991): “We become the stories we tell ourselves.” This is at the heart of narrative identity.
• Dan McAdams (2001): Legacy and meaning-making are central in his theory of narrative identity, particularly in generativity scripts.
• Narrative therapy (Michael White & David Epston): Talks about re-authoring our lives to align with values and meaning.
• Viktor Frankl (1985): Man’s Search for Meaning ties story to purpose, survival, and legacy.

The highlights

• I introduce Nicola and she says a bit about what brought her to this focus in her career with She Wrote Too 00:00
• I ask Nicola who are her favourite women authors who have been forgotten about, and we discuss the struggles women authors and scholars faced 06:42
• We look at how the past impacts societal expectations on women’s self-perception 8:29
• Nicola talks about the stories she found really powerful for talking about this narrative of determination and resilience 14:19
• Nicola discusses why she thinks some of these historical women authors were written out and sabotaged 17:34
• I ask Nicola if she thinks that the hard work is paying off and we are starting to see more parity in whose voices get published? 25:03
• Nicola explains what bibliotherapy is, and its relationship to ACT 29:45
• We discuss the importance of story 38:12
• I ask Nicola about her book and the kickstarter for it 43:07

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SPEAKERS

Rosie Gilderthorp, Nicola Morgan

Hello and welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'm here today with Nicola Morgan, who some of you may know as the co-host of the fantastic She Wrote Too podcast and Substack. As well as a podcaster, Nicola is a positive psychologist, champion of women's writers, bibliotherapist, creativity specialist, tutor and mentor. She's properly multi hyphen, having been a former lawyer and teacher in past lives. She now uses that wealth of experience and passion to help others thrive through story and psychology. And I'm so pleased that she's here to talk to us today. So welcome to the podcast, Nicola.

Oh, thank you, Rosie. I'm very, very happy to be here. Thank you for having me. And gosh, what's a list? That sounds like a lot. It just really sounds like someone who can't decide what to do, isn't it really?

I think it's somebody that likes to spread their talents and gather information, and knowledge, and put it in their backpack and take it to their next chapter, personally. That's how I would see it.

Thank you. Yeah. Thank you Rosie. I like your take on that. Actually, on the podcast, She Wrote Too, looking into the lives of lots of women who've gone before us, which I will come onto, I've just jumped in there because you've sparked a thought in my mind, lots of women in the past have done lots and lots of different things, so I'll come back to that when I get to talk about legacy later. But sorry, carry on Rosie.

Yeah. Well, I'm really excited to talk to you about She Wrote Too, because I think it's a really great example of how we can impact on wellbeing through interacting with culture and the debates that are often raging in wider society and literature gives us a great insight into those and how they have developed over time too. But before we dive into all of that, I'm gonna ask you for loads of examples. Can you just say a bit about what brought you to this focus in your career? Because like you said, you've been many places.

Yes. When I was thinking about what I was going to say to you, I was thinking, when I talk to other people, can I bring all these strands together because they make perfect sense to me. But it does seem quite disparate in some ways, because She Wrote Too is about historical women writing literature, but I link that with psychology and, particularly positive psychology and narrative and meaning. So I think I'm just doing a great job at not answering your actual question, which is how I came to be involved in this.

Yeah, well, why you think your path led you to She Wrote Too because there are so many different ways that you could have gone. You could have, you know, stayed in law, you could have stayed in teaching, but something obviously kind of pulled you to this point and this focus.

I think it's a combination of all of those things. both law and literature and then my master's in, positive psychology, and all the time a common thread running through all of them was actually feminism. And justice, actually. I've always been very concerned with justice. I was looking at my bookshelf the other day because I like to try and read fiction, but I'm always drawn to books about justice and so that just must be something inherently within me. And so this podcast really draws all of those things together. Plus my co-host Caroline, who's, I've been friends with for, dunno, 15, 18 years or so, she's a writer and historian, and so when we got together, which we frequently did for a lunch, we would often be talking about issues like the ones we discuss on the podcast. So we kind of came together and thought, ah, and we've developed more and more a sense of a mission as we've gone on and now we are even taking the podcast into schools and we're writing a book, and, so we've become more of a community project and so… our book is for 9 to 12 year olds because we are trying to get to the kids.

So important. Influence the kids.

So does it make sense to you that all these strands actually do pull together?

Yeah, I think it does to me. My first degree was in English. My first love was reading literature, and creative writing. And for me, I think what I was always interested in, when I was reading literature, particularly historical literature, was the psychology of the author. You know, why did they write that? What does this tell us about the way that they felt about their life in the society that they were living in? And you know, when I've listened to your episodes on Wuthering Heights, you've done two on Wuthering Heights, I love Wuthering Heights, and it felt like that was what you were doing in those episodes, because I think that tells us so much about, you know, how people coped with the world that they were living in, what sense they made of it, and how they saw their roots to empowerment and how that looks so different. And I think there's a lot we can take from that into the modern world and society and thinking about what should we have learned from this, that we can use now.

Yeah, well we specialise in that sort of era in particular, and there's several reasons for that. One, we, we sort of don't understand or necessarily appreciate how much of our values system and how we've got things set up comes from the sort of the Victorian times or perhaps just before. It's only a few generations away. And so some of the things that we take on, we've got from our parents, who've got it from their parents, who've got it from their parents. And it might have gone unquestioned. And also Victorian era was the time when the myth of the angel at the hearth, the what a woman should be was really perpetuated by Queen Victoria. And I, women weren't really like that, it was a myth and they were sort of constructed. And that has impacted on all the 20th century and the things that are expected of women. And I think if we are aware of our legacy, we can go hang on a minute. And I think it's really helpful to us as women to know that we've always been here, we've always been doing things, we've always been creating. This is not a new thing, this is not a new fight. So, that, that's kind of something that really motivates me in it and to make people aware that actually, you know, we're tough and we're creative.

Yeah, absolutely. And when there were so many barriers to female authorship, they were still doing it. And I think often something that you talk about on the podcast is that some of the female writers have been forgotten and don't get the attention that they deserve in school curriculum, and you know, in our general understanding of literature, who are your favourite women authors who have been sort of forgotten about?

Oh, gosh, there's so many, there's so many good ones. I mean, the shocking thing is how many were really bestsellers and hugely successful and have been totally written out of history. I mean, I think I like every single one on our podcast. I don't think there's any that I sort of think I don't like them. Now recently we, we've, we have looked at some big celebrity writers, you know, like Agatha Christie and the Bronte's and so on, but that's because we didn't actually want to ignore the ones that have created a storm and kept going. But, Amy Levy, I think, is one of them. She was another one who went to university, did all this studying, didn't get awarded a degree, you know, isn't that just so shocking?

It is shocking.

And Cambridge didn't award degrees until 1948.

Wow. That's so recent.

Yeah. And I posted on our Facebook page the other day a picture of a protest in 1897 where, because they'd been admitting women for about 30 years by that time, only to two particular colleges at Cambridge, but there was a huge protest, all these men out on the streets saying that women should not be awarded degrees.

Gosh. What it would've taken in that context to be like, you will publish my work. You think about how sort of imposter syndrome rhythm we are now and how difficult it is still to say, no, I think this is good enough, even though I've been rejected from one, I'm gonna go for another, I'm gonna go for another. Having that level of resilience now, with the upbringing that we've had is hard. Imagine doing it in that context where it's just assumed that you're not worthy of a piece of paper that your lazy male counterpart gets without question.

Yeah. But this is where I think we sort of blame ourselves and look inwardly to, or what should I do about myself or my imposter syndrome? No, this is actually, this is societal, this is systemic. This is what I mean about the links between the past and now. So, you know, I was brought up by a mother who was born in the forties, I think, and so that was my main focus in my upbringing. Now, my parents would refer to a job as a second salary and my dad has literally said to my husband, well, you need a nice, decent, big car, Nicola just needs a run around. And my dad doesn't seem to acknowledge that I was a lawyer for the top London law firm, one of the biggest law firms in the world. He doesn't even see that. That's my second salary that can buy my little runaround. And so, I'm not having a go at my dad, he's a product of his culture, but that culture still impacts. And so when we have imposter syndrome, it's not you, this is what we've been taught.

And this is so interesting. Actually. This is exactly where it intersects and comes together, isn't it? Because I, I think, and I'm sure lots of people listening to this would agree that we've been pushed down this path of really individualising and pathologising mental health difficulties when every time I dive into the literature and I get on the ground and talk to people, and I'm with my clients in the room, I always feel that the principal difficulty is not them, that it's always outside of their control. There's a huge part of culture and society that is creating the mental health difficulties that we are calling epidemics and sticking, you know, medicalised labels on, and surely that's something that we can see if we go back and look through literature, surely we can see that that process was happening in the past, so it's probably still happening now.

Yes, because the ideas that, particularly during the Victorian times and at the outset of psychology and so on, they still inform a lot of what we do today. Even the example of medicine where you traditionally, medics were taught the male body and the female body as other, and this othering, of course we're gonna feel like imposters. We've been taught we're other for the whole time.

And that is still happening. I had a disastrous heart scan, when I was pregnant, where, I mean, honestly, you would think I was an alien. They had absolutely no idea how to scan my heart and I was just a pregnant woman. There's quite a few of us. Like, I couldn't believe it. I was like, well, there's nothing particularly weird about me, but you would think that I had kind of 10 hearts or something. The amount of incompetence with dealing with that situation. And I think women's health in general, you know, working in the perinatal space, we've made progress, I'm sure we have, but it is still not where it needs to be.

Yeah. But because we are kind of storytelling creatures, these stories continue for a very, very long time. And we don't even, you know, if you think of things like The Hero with a Thousand Faces, note ‘Hero’, these cultural narratives, they are very, very influential because this is how policy is decided, and practices are decided, you know, medical, psychological, all that sort of thing are largely based on story. So I think it's really important to have an awareness of what stories we're running and where they've come from. And then actually to sort of, all the people that think they've got imposter syndrome, as I say, they have because they've been, they've been othered. It's not them. Well, maybe that's oversimplification, but there's certainly an element of that going on, I would say.

Yeah, and I think sometimes, although taking personal responsibility for what we can control is really powerful and can help us to make a big change in our individual lives, I think we do have to recognise that we also need to be pushing for that systemic change. Otherwise, you know, our daughters are gonna struggle in the exact same way that we did, and there's, you know, there's stuff going on in the world, isn't there, that makes us think that perhaps our daughters are gonna struggle more than we did, and that we need to be activists in the same way that these amazing women writers were activists in their time.

Oh, yes. Very much. And I think to know about them, in a way gives a sense of legacy. And because they've done it, we can see that we can do it, if that makes sense. I would say that every time we read a woman from the past, we are kind of lighting a, it's lighting a signal fire to other women that, you can do it too. There's this lovely line from the film Suffragette where one of the women goes, you can't keep us all down, we are half the population, we're in every house. And it's, I think knowing that sort of story and their determination is really important.

It absolutely is. So, you know, thinking about the body of writers that you've covered so far in the podcast, is there, you know, a particular story that you found really powerful for talking about that kind of narrative and resilience?

There's so many. There's lots of women who… we end up with loads of queer women, and I think partly because they didn't have to waste their time on men and so they weren't clearing up after someone else so they could actually spend time on their careers. I'm just trying to think of an example. Recently we've been talking about the Bronte's, they are well known, but they dealt with, they were isolated in Yorkshire. They had an alcoholic brother, an alcoholic father who was also quite abusive. And, loads of these women didn't get much of an education, and they were kind of really defiant, they totally did it anyway. Clemence Dane, she was pretty cool. She was quite extraordinary. She was an actor, a teacher, a sculptor, a broadcaster, a screenwriter, social woman with talented friends. She hung out with loads of really cool people, she was best mates with Noel Coward. I mean, she was just an extraordinary person. Yeah, she's probably a big favorite. And she was kind of written out of history and yet was a really, really big figure in all, in kind of every way, you know, big part of the social scene, big part of the literary scene, hugely successful. You don't hear about her really.

No, I've not heard about her before. So why do you think she got written out?

Because she's a woman. There were, they just, when the women died, quite often the men would start writing horrible things about them, putting them down, because they didn't want them to be… you think of that scene I described about the men protesting at Cambridge, that they didn't want women being awarded degrees. The writers, the male writers were the same. They didn't want these hugely successful women going forward with their, into the canon. You know, they didn't want them to be part of it. And so quite often they would intentionally, once they got this chance, sabotage them.

Wow.

And write them out. I think she was victim to that. Quite a few others were as well. Sorry.

Do you think that was just about fear of competition and losing their place?

I think it was a genuinely held belief by the men that women should be secondary, and should have a supporting role. And that while they'd let them have their little five minutes in the sun, they needed to now be quiet again. Well, the sad thing about that is that it was successful. And so then when young women are going through school, all the writers, and it has, this has improved considerably, all the writers they're reading are largely men even now. And so they're looking at, and if you look at the figures of who reads what, women read women writers, hardly any men read women writers.

Oh yes. And that's true for films and television as well, that men tend to only watch things which have male protagonists and they are not interested in films and television that have a female protagonist. It's really interesting to listen to your podcast alongside something like the rest is entertainment. For anyone that hasn't listened to that, you know, this is a really interesting podcast where they look at what's going on in the contemporary media and have really interesting discussions. And this is something that I really picked up from their discussions. And they've got a male host, Richard Osmond and a female host Marina Hyde, and so having those different perspectives on you know, what's good, what's not good, and why things are successful from two people that know the industry inside out, that, you know, that just seems to be a truth that men only really want to watch and and hear about men. Very interesting.

But it’s that othering again, isn't it? Even my own brother, when I was doing the comedy circuit, said to me, I don't like female comedians because they only talk about women's stuff.

Oh yeah, that's something we haven't talked about, you also do standup comedy.

Oh, I don't now.

That's another one for your hyphens. Yes, I remember I learned that about you because Nicola was in the Do More Than Therapy membership for a long time, and I remember when I learned that about you, I thought it was so cool, because I think it is a place, standup is a place where women have not felt welcome.

No, they're not. They're not. And I even, there was one show that I was doing, which was, there were several of us, you know, because lots of comedians either go on, do five minutes, 10 minutes, whatever, and, the host said, ‘and this is our only female comedian tonight, you'll be pleased to know’. That’s the MC.

Oh my God. What a way to then enter onto the stage. Hi!

Everyone going, let's get this over with.

Oh my goodness. It's not really surprising, but it is still shocking.

But it's just a reflection of that othering that I’m banging on about, that, you know, when my brother said it's, they only talk about women's stuff, and it brings me back to that quote that I mentioned earlier. We're half the population. It's not only women's stuff. We are here, we're entitled to be here. We've always been here. And actually while we're at it, we make the people.

Yeah. True, true. And yeah, it's, it's so interesting because I also, there was a comment in a psychologist's group recently where people were thinking about, you know, why young girls become, or, you know, they were talking in the present tense, and actually this is what I wanted to talk about, why young girls become obsessed with young male pop stars. And what I chucked into that conversation was that I'm not sure that they are at this present moment. Because, you know, I don't have teenage girls at home, but I've got teenage nieces, and I know you've got young girls in your life, and so I'm interested in your take on this - I know they're not even teenagers anymore - but yes, in my understanding of popular culture at the moment, there are a lot of big female artists that are kind of getting the passion and excitement from young girls that maybe when I was a teenager we didn't really have. You had the Spice Girls, but then you had about five boy bands for every one successful girl band at that time. So of course you would, if you were into music, you would be into male bands because that was by far the majority. That isn't what I'm seeing at the moment in the charts. And so what I chucked into the conversation, because a lot of it was about like these evolutionary and biological reasons that girls might become obsessed with young boys, and I was like, well, maybe they just didn't have that much of a choice. And now girls are choosing from a wider menu and they are choosing female artists a lot. We can see that from the success of Sabrina Carpenter, Chapel Rone. There's tons of them out there.

Billie Eilish. Taylor Swift.

Yeah. Well, I'm a Swiftie, but I'm old.

Oh, yeah. But yes. They didn't use to have that choice because women didn't use to get. But this is part of what we were talking about earlier, I think before we started recording. A lot of these women are starting off as indie artists. They might get signed eventually, but they wouldn't have probably been signed otherwise. So they've done what loads of the women writers in the past did, is go right, well, if you are not gonna let us on your playing field, we'll build our own over here.

It's really interesting and there is something I've noticed from discussions that I've had with you, but also I was part of an art exhibition about the life of Antonia White. I dunno if I talked to you about that ever, because it's something you'd certainly be interested in. And something that struck me was that, and I think we're in a similar situation now, well, we always have to be thinking about the intersectionality. So the women's voices that have survived in the literary cannon tend to be the women that had some sort of privilege that they could leverage to push themselves forward. Like whether that was, you know, some financial stability or they knew the right people, or mixed in the circles that allowed them to work their asses off to get their work recognised. And it just makes me wonder, you know, because you mentioned a few artists there, and I think I mentioned some, we're talking about, oh, they're all nepo babies now. Well, of course they are. Because if you don't have that, then you can't push yourself forward. It's like, you know, you can independently publish a book if you can afford to. If you can't afford to, then you've got to try and get a traditional publishing deal. So I think we're still trapped in this world where only very few women have the capability to push themselves into the limelight, and thank God that they do. But do you think that it's changing? Do you think that their kind of hard work is paying off and we will start to see, or we are starting to see more parity in whose voices get published.

I think it's moving in the right direction, hopefully. I mean, it's still, it's still so slow moving. I think that, and I base this on, I've got two daughters who are 23 and 19, nearly 20, and they are both in the arts. One's in theater, one's in fine arts. And two feistier young women, you… well, they're both very strong, determined people, and they're just at the start of their careers, so maybe I'll answer that in five years time when they see what they experienced. But, they and their contemporaries all seem extremely determined and are part of all sorts of projects. They don't seem to have much in the way of imposter syndrome. They seem extremely defiant and seem to be empowered by technology, you know, that they can put their work out there and you know, my, one of my daughters takes things to the Edinburgh Fringe and, you know, she writes plays and they get put on and all that sort of thing. So, but women have always done that. This is not, this is not new, but they used to get sidelined and now I don't think they'll let them get away with that.

That's interesting. And maybe you are right, actually, I think you mentioned earlier that the women that had the responsibilities at home, that maybe had, you know, had to go into marriage young or gone into supporting roles. So, you know, I'm thinking about the people that might have worked in factories or worked in really exhausting jobs that take away all of your time and energy for creativity. You know, those women probably didn't have anything left in the tank, whereas the women who had more kind of freedom in their, you know, relationships, their romantic relationships and their caring responsibilities, they had that chunk of time left and energy left to do the creative work. And I wonder if maybe more women now, that probably is social progress that we've made. We see people typically getting married later. Hopefully the relationships when they enter them are a little bit less, yeah, a little bit more balanced than they used to be. So perhaps that that is where we have had the progress and that will translate into women having more time to create and push themselves forward.

There's actually a brilliant play that we looked at called 10 Clowning Street by Joan Dugdale, that we did an episode on that. And in that it's the Prime Minister, it's about the Prime Minister, 10 Clowning Street. And he wants to, he's anti suffrage, and the prime minister's, and so what he decides to do is send all the women out to work, make it compulsory for all un married women to work, so they're two exhausted to protest and be wanting to vote, because he thinks if they go to work all day in a factory, so he makes it compulsory and his daughters take part in this scheme to kind of go, oh look. Because his daughters are also anti suffrage because they were privileged women and their life was very nice, thank you very much. And they didn't see why these women were making such a fuss. And so the daughters go out to work and they are shocked and they're appalled, and they both quit their jobs within about three or four days, and they become suffragettes. And, in this story, they're telling their dad this just as a Fleet Street hack has turned up. And so the Prime Minister has to give in because the story is too big. But anyway, it's a really great play and, but it's just a protest play from the time. Fantastic. And there were loads of them, and it was play for the radio and yeah. So there were all these women saying this over a hundred years ago.

Wow. Wow. I've absolutely got to see or hear that play somehow. And I'll definitely listen to your podcast about it as well. One thing I'm interested in, so you've mentioned to me before about bibliotherapy. And it isn't something that I know very much about, so can you explain what that means?

Yeah, sure. It's a about using literature and reading, and I didn't know your first degree was in English, but as a kind of a source of wellbeing for mindfulness. And there are several, kind of aspects of this. There's a growing body of evidence that reading literary fiction increases your empathy and emotional intelligence and regulation because there's, I can't remember which part of your brain, but part of your brain sort of believes that you're having the experience that you're reading about. So you're actually through, it's a bit like Matt Haig's Midnight Library thing, you are having more lives than you are actually having, by reading. So you're thinking through other points of view and thinking of different perspectives. And I don't know if you've ever experienced a book where you just think that's just changed my life?

Yes, absolutely.

You finish it and you think everything is different now. But there's been quite a lot of research and that's one of the, lots of academic links that I'll send you, but it, well, reflective reading can just reduce stress and gives a bit of escapism, I suppose. It's also a way to explore meaning and identity and values. And if you think, I don't know how much of a fan you are of ACT, but you know, meaning and values are really important in that. And so bibliotherapy is all about tapping into those things. And also if you think about mindfulness, it's a mindful activity, isn't it? And it gives you flow because you're totally absorbed. So, so many therapeutic qualities from reading. And then of course, you are tapping into wisdom as well, because you can direct your reading in a… so that's what a bibliotherapist does, is sort of thinks what would help you with what you are trying to achieve or what you're dealing with or that kind of thing.

I love that because so often in therapy people struggle to identify what their personal values are, what really matters to them. It's quite difficult because often we've been taught to suppress that because it's not really okay to maybe believe that something's important that's different to what your parents thought or to what your friends think, and so people often really struggle to make contact with that. But sometimes when you read something that is quite challenging, that can be a real insight into, oh, okay, well I feel really uncomfortable with this, why is that? You know, what is it that that means to me? And you know, do I really believe that that's important or not important? I can see how it can really open up your mind and help you explore your own psychology.

Yeah. And then sort of linking, as we've talked about ACT, you know, I'm sort of promoting the idea of legacy. And I don't just mean legacy of what's come before, but what's happening now, and that links with ACT doesn't it? Because, sometimes in ACT you will use the idea of legacy to really focus on values because it's not just what has come before me and using that to help meaning, but then what do I want to leave? What do I want? And, it's the thread of values and relationships and creative expression really. It's, you know, what am I creating here? What do I want to... does that make sense?

It does. And I, you know, my head is already kind of pinging off in a thousand directions about how maybe we could use even those of us who are not trained in bibliotherapy specifically, maybe there are aspects of it that we could use in a therapeutic setting where we are maybe using a model like ACT.

Yeah. There are some training courses, but they're not really kind of giving an accreditation and so on like that. I think if you incorporated it into ACT, and there's a lot you can read about it, but, now I'm sure there's someone that will sell you a certificate, but…

There always is now.

Yeah. So that's really the nature of, so there's so many, there's so many elements to bibliotherapy. You can, you can use it on lots and lots of different levels. It can be escapism, I mean, or just reflective. And it can prompt journaling as well. So all these things, it's multifaceted really.

Yeah, it really is. I was just thinking about the book that had a really big impact on me last year was, I think it's called, Can You See Me by Libby Scott? And it was a book that was co-authored with, kind of a grown up writer and an 11-year-old autistic girl, and it was about the experience of being an 11-year-old autistic girl. And, you know, because my daughter, she's not 11, she's only eight, but she's autistic and in a lot of ways very similar to the little girl that co-authored the book, the empathy it unlocked within me was massive. I suddenly was able to see things through the eyes of somebody that might experience the world quite differently to me. And it's been really powerful. And I would say that that book still impacts the way that I interact with my own daughter and with other children every day. Like that's how powerful books can be. And so, you know, for me, in my therapy and in my coaching, that was absolutely important to discuss, because it can shake you, it can make you feel like, oh my goodness, my whole value system and way of being in the world has changed. And being able to use something like maybe the ACT Hexaflex to think about the processes behind that and how we can use that for positive motion forward, I think is really important.

I think practitioners can definitely use it for their own wellbeing. When you're thinking about the emotional labor of client work and the challenges of running a psychology business, then it's not just escape that it's giving you but insight and experience and grounding and reflection time. And it takes you out of yourself in a sense. I don’t know if that's a very good way to explain it. But you can, when we get stressed, we can go, I'm gesturing to show how we go inward, but if you release it by looking at other people's ideas and so on, and other people who might have experienced the same or, or similar or you can relate to what they're going through, it takes you out of yourself again and you realise you're not alone, you're connected. And, it can do that sitting on your sofa.

Yeah, it is amazing, isn't it, when you think about what we're able to do when we read, it is incredible. And you know, you mentioned that flow state, it's so different isn't it, to when you are sort of passively watching something. I feel like my engagement is much more with reading and I think children instinctively know that. So bless them, my kids have lots of challenges when it comes to reading, dyslexia and all sorts that makes it really hard for them. But my daughter's still drawn to it, she's still drawn to try to do it. I think she could just say, no, I don't want to do that, I want to watch telly. She doesn't, there's something about reading. She loves reading Dog Man, and I do recommend it, Dog Man's great. But there's something about that, that she still finds compelling despite how difficult it is. And I think, you know, we need to, you know, remember that and, and continue to make contact with the things that make reading really special. And if we can make that accessible to people in different ways. What are your thoughts actually on audio books?

Love them. Absolutely love them. Sometimes I read and have the audio book playing at the same time. It stops me drifting off. And, also then if I have to go and pick something up or I can carry on, I'm carrying on the story and I don't have to put the book down. I'm just carrying on. So I walk their dogs or whatever. I love them. And also, I was gonna say, I, as much as I love books and I really do, but I also, it's story really, so I don't mind it in any form. So I love telly, films, radio plays, everything. I just think story is so valuable, and if you look at the power of story in our social world and to ourselves, it's huge. I mean, you can't underestimate it. If you look at what's happening in the United States at the moment, for example, you've got an incompetent leader, and people telling themselves that he's really great and they really love him. Now that is complete narrative. It's not rational. There's no evidence for what they're saying at all. If you want evidence with the power of story, it's like, look across the pond.

Yes. And every, every marketing book talks about that human need for story and the way that we understand things through these kind of, oh, I've forgotten the word for it, archetypes, which you can see have their origins, you know, in ancient literature. And they get modified and changed slightly, but they don't change much. And that's why we struggled to break free from some of these harmful narratives and archetypes which are so woven into the way that we understand the world that we struggle to even see them. And it is obvious when you look at people who become very politically successful without much evidence of competence that you know, that is because they have been able to latch on to one of these archetypes. And I think in our country, a loss of that comes down to coming from one of the right families, sounding like you come from one of the right families, looking like a man of a certain age who was educated in a certain way. In America, it's the story of the American dream. It's the story of like, money means something different there, in and of itself, and I find it fascinating to try and analyze, you know, what story is it that made this guy successful? Because it seems bonkers when you're looking at it rationally, but you’re right, it is success comes from harnessing those stories and using them to your advantage.

I actually wrote, I have a substack called the Stories We Live by and I wrote an article I think called I'll be your hero. And it uses the hero archetype and how Donald Trump has navigated his story to become a hero and people have accepted it. And that is a really great example of an archetype and how it matters.

It's a wonderful example.

So I would encourage any women who are listening to this or, or men who would also benefit from knowing about different archetypes, to read this brilliant book by Clarissa Pincola Estes called Women Who Run The With the Wolves. Have you heard of it?

No. That sounds brilliant.

It's an interesting book. It's a complicated book. It's a long book. But it draws on Jungian psychology and folk tales, and explores the wild woman archetype, which she says has been neglected, which is all about the instinctive, intuitive part that patriarchal systems have suppressed. And she says, if we know this, it changes how you think about yourself. And then further to that, I mentioned Joseph what's-his-face with his hero's story? The Hero with a Thousand Faces, this brilliant woman, who I'm in touch with, who I'm interviewing later on this year, Katie Pickles, She's written a book, Heroines in History, and she reframes the Hero's Journey. Oh, it was Joseph Campbell, yeah, I try to forget his name. And she argues that it's not just female versions of heroes. It's not like the women heroes are the ones who did what men do. She's like, no, no, no, no. Our journeys are often relational and moral and complex, and I don't think we can ever forget, and we have to remind men of this, we make the people.

Very important. Very important to remember. The ultimate heroic journey. So I'm aware I've taken up lots of your time today and we need to bring this to a close. I could talk to you all day about this stuff. It's absolutely fascinating. But I do know that you have a book coming out and there's a Kickstarter running for it. So tell us where we can go and find this book and this Kickstarter?

Well, the Kickstarter hasn't started yet 'cause you can only run Kickstarters for a limited period of time. So we wanted to have lots of the book ready, which it nearly is ready to go. So that will be out in the next few weeks. So it's a book called She Wrote Too, Women Whose Words Change the World. And it's actually for young boys and girls, aiming at 9 to 12, but plus plus plus, and it's written by me and Caroline Rance, who is a published author and a historian, and it's illustrated by my daughter.

Wow, I didn't know that. That's wonderful.

So, Florence Morgan, she's currently at University of Arts London. She's going to Edinburgh to study Fine Art. So, for the Kickstarter campaign, there's going to be, for certain levels of Kickstarter, gifts. There's going to be original prints and stuff available for people who take part in the campaign. And we are launching it in Brighton in October, so it will be available then, and at that point it'll be on Amazon and everything like that and all the, all good bookshops. So it's very exciting.

Brilliant. Well, I'll make sure that when we've got it, I put the Kickstarter link into our show notes and into the article that will go with this on Substack as well. And I'll keep it up to date, so when it's available on Amazon or other good bookshops, I'll make sure that link drops in there too. Thank you so much for your time today, Nicola. It has been fascinating.

Thank you. It's been lovely to talk to you and sorry I've gone so off topic and probably haven't said half of what I thought I might say.

We never do. This is the Business of Psychology, we go interesting places, not always the places we planned.

Quite, quite. Thanks very much Rosie.