This introduced one of the problems that reading certain books can cause together with a good solution.
While other articles cover the sometimes devastating effects of putting ideas and experiences into the context of other people’s lives and looking at the total picture, this one is about being badly affected emotionally or even psychically rather than mentally.
Reading about the lives of writers such as August Strindberg, Stella Benson, Mary Webb, Ouida, Jean Rhys and Antonia White, who have all been featured or at least mentioned on here, can have a very bad effect on impressionable people.
Some people are very good at getting inside books, sharing the writers’ viewpoints and living the lives and stories. This can be a two-edged sword: when reading certain books, such people are in danger of getting sucked in, overwhelmed, trapped and poisoned by psychic contagion.
Some of the harmful effects come from picking up the writers’ inner states from the material: general negativity and feelings of misery, agony, abandonment, depression, desolation, disconnection, doom and despair can be infectious.
Counterweights and antidotes
By far the best solution is to read very different books, ones that have on the whole a very positive effect. They can be inspiring, educational and informational or just entertaining.
Children’s and young adults’ books are often ideal; old friends, comfort reading and new books by a favourite author are all good too.
Witty and amusing material is ideal for breaking evil spells. Gerald Durrell’s books for example are very funny indeed. As I said in an article about Durrell, I feel that I have lived some of his life in Corfu and Africa with him. This is the good side of being able to get inside books and share the writers’ feelings and experiences.
An example from an example
I found some independent confirmation of the problem in one of the previously mentioned books about Antonia White.
Her daughter Lyndall read Antonia White’s unpublished notebooks after her death. She had this to say about the effect this had on her and what she did to counteract it:
“...for in those notebooks the dark side of Antonia’s nature often took control of her pen. Reading them was like undertaking a journey to the outskirts of hell, and I often had to put them aside and go for a long walk in the country to reassure myself a safer world existed outside my mother’s mind.”
From Nothing to Forgive by Lyndall Hopkinson
This terrible effect is exactly what I am talking about.
Taking time out and getting back to nature is another very good way of dealing with the effects of reading dark material.
It is a good idea for impressionable people to maintain a mental list of whatever works best for them and keep it on standby.
In addition to books, beautiful images, stirring and harmonious music and some films can be very effective. For example, I find the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup ideal for dispelling the darkness and driving the demons away.
