The Rise of Superhero Therapy: Comic Books as Psychological Treatment
Dr. Patrick O’Connor has been incorporating geek culture into his sessions since 2010, while he was working with kids in foster care. The idea came to him after thinking about the relationship between Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson——better known as Batman and Robin——and how Dick came to live with Bruce after his family was killed, essentially becoming the billionaire’s foster son.
“I began to wonder what stories would be out there of Batman and Robin comic books that maybe my kids would relate to,” O’Connor tells The Daily Beast. “Anything about ‘You’re not my real dad,’ or ‘I shouldn’t have to listen to you,’ but then listening to that guidance and maybe starting to buy into that relationship——to try to learn from somebody who’s more experienced but also cares for you and your well being.”
O’Connor eventually found himself over at Graham Crackers Comics, a chain in the Chicago area, looking to explore his idea further. He figured he would search for Batman titles first, since that’s what initially brought him to the store, but where to go from there? Well, if he planned on introducing stories into sessions with patients, he knew that he would need to use complete stories. So he began hunting for sequential issues, finding packs of Spider-Man, Steel, and Hawkman along the way. Then he got to reading. Keeping a word document by his side, O’Connor would record the things the heroes or villains would go through——recurring themes like “facing fear,” “losing a loved one” or “being different.” His notes eventually formed the basis of Comicspedia, an online database filled with hundreds of individual comic book summaries and their respective psychological focuses. But more than that, his research paid off in his sessions.
“I noticed that, naturally, not only did the kids get excited about it and started looking forward to therapy, it really brought out a lot of stuff that they wanted to talk about——a lot of deep issues,” O’Connor says. “It made the relationship between my clients and myself a lot richer.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/17/the-rise-of-superhero-therapy-comic-books-as-psychological-treatment.html