Fairytale therapy: Legend. about me
In any fairy tale, “Dobro Media” is concluded. And the works of this verbal genre not only instruct, teach us, but also treat. Psychologist Tatyana Zinkevich-Evstigneeva talks about the method of fairy-tale therapy.
Spas -therapy is a word that often causes a smile, and the method itself seems to be a matter of frivolous. However, fairy tales, myths, legends are the most
ancient way of supporting and teaching a person using a word. The first of them arose in our ancestors simultaneously with the appearance of speech. With their help, in a symbolic form, people conveyed to each other knowledge about the structure of the world and the people living in it.
Tales – a kind of bank of life situations that most fully reflects everyday experience, spiritual heritage, accumulated by generations of ancestors. And that is why today psychotherapists with their help find the key to understanding and resolving internal conflicts of those who need help.
Bank of situations
The fairy tale therapist selects (or invents) a fairy tale, the hero of which is faced with situations similar to what the client is experiencing, and always finds out of them. Each such a fabulous story forms an invisible bridge between different levels of the listener’s psyche: consciousness, personal and collective unconscious.
Swiss psychotherapist Karl Gustav Jung believed that the originality of our personality, style of behavior, type of thinking, and even emotional reactions are largely determined by the collective unconscious, our innate memory of the past of humanity. It manifests itself in the form of archetypes – universal stereotypes of perception, thinking and actions.
The same plots of fairy tales of different peoples of the world – this is the manifestation of archetypes of the collective unconscious. They are transmitted from generation to generation, which retains the unity of human culture, makes people mutual understanding. Listening to fairy tales, we unconsciously identify ourselves with their characters, “try on” their actions, and this makes us change. And suddenly we can solve the problem that excites us, find new ways to communicate with people or a way out of the situation.
About the method
To whom will fit. Due to the variety of fairy -tale forms and genres, this method has no age restrictions. Fairytale therapy helps both children (with fears, aggressive behavior, difficulties in adaptation), and adults (experiencing emotional difficulties and difficulties in communication suffering from anxious states).
How therapy goes. Fairytale therapy can be individual and group. Work with children and younger adolescents, as a rule, takes place in a playful way (with the help of sandbox, dolls, costumes). The short-term course of fairy tale therapy takes 1-3 consultations, long-term-10-12.
Pattern of fate
Ways to work with a fairy tale, myth, legend, parable. They are used in Jungian therapy, and in psychodrama, and in transactive analysis. One of the methods – complex fairy tale therapy – is based on a system of ideas about universal plots that, unfolding in the life of a particular person, form his individual “pattern of fate”.
Each of us has our own character, life experience, the style of relations with others, but most of the events of our lives develop according to universal universal scenarios. If in some life plot there is a failure, we lose control of the situation, feel anxiety, uncertainty, feel a lack of energy. Someone has an internal conflict or early injury. Someone reacts so much to severe stress. Someone fell under the influence of another person who pulled him into the implementation of his own scenario.
Fairytale therapist helps to see the mechanism of this failure. He carefully listens to a person’s story about his life, distinguishes an archetypal plot that affects his life now, helps to determine dangerous traps and offers a harmonious “completion of the plot”. It is for this that he selects (or composes) fairy tales, whose heroes find themselves in a similar situation.
“Learn at the clouds!”
Stanislav turned 42 years old, when he had the feeling that he seemed to live a foreign life. At the first meetings with a fairy tale therapist, he said that he was forced to comply with the image of a successful person, it is difficult for him to be sincere, express his feelings, communicating with subordinates or close people.
From the point of view of the therapist, in the character of Stanislav weakened the power of the merchant’s archetype, which is associated with the desire for a new, unusual, the ability to feel other people, the ability to realize his creative potential. When the forces of this archetype are not enough, we begin to miss and suffer from monotony. In total, seven male archetypes stand out in comprehensive fairy -tale therapy: a warrior, monarch, peasant, merchant, philosopher, monk and servant – they determine how a person realizes himself in an observation, social life.
To help Stanislav strengthen the archetype of the merchant, the therapist created a fairy tale for him. Here is its abbreviated version.
“Lived in the world a wise and kind king. Sands loved him, the neighbors respected. No one saw him gloomy: with a smile, he easily resolved the most difficult state issues. But deep down, the king was unhappy, because he missed: everything that surrounded him seemed to him predictable and understandable. He easily guessed what they would say to him what they would ask for, and found a solution even before the petitioner opened his mouth.
Why did he smile? Once, when he was still a child, a wizard arrived at the court. The ward king asked for his son a special gift. “Magic does not help people become happy,” he answered. – Only happiness, obtained by his labor, remains for life. “. The ward king laughed: “You are gloomy, and we have a holiday-smile! Smile to the face and sages and monarchs “. “Good,” the wizard agreed, “here is my gift: I give your son a smile that will never get off his face.”.
Since then, the young king smiled. The smile did not reflect his feelings and thoughts, but for others it was pleasant and desirable. And he himself dreamed of meeting that wizard to return him a gift. When boredom became unbearable, the king decided to hit the road. “Maybe the road will scatter boredom?”He thought. But on the road, the sun still rose and sat down, the grass was green in the summer, and in winter it fell snow. And people solved the same problems. Boredom.
“Hey, boring man with a smile on his face!”-the king once heard. The wizard came out of the thicket to him. “So you gave me an eternal smile? Why did you punish me like that?” -” Do they punish a smile?” -” For me this is a punishment. I easily decide the most difficult things, get along with people, no one can even offend me-the smile interferes. “You tell me about happiness,” the wizard shook his head, “but you call him misfortune”. – “Inside, I have empty – boredom. ” -” Not empty, but busy: it’s time for you to drive out boredom from standing “. – “Teach how!” -” Learn at the clouds “. So the wizard advised and melted.
Now the king rode, raising his eyes up, learning to watch the clouds. And they fled around the sky, every minute updated, changing the outlines. Finally, the king realized that he did not need to go somewhere behind them, he often began to stop and followed the cloud playing for a long time.
Ships swam over him, a second – and he already saw a mountain ridge, and after a moment – the battle of dragons. Each of their glare, the transition of the form was unpredictable and never repeated. And then the king felt that boredom was gone, and his heart was filled with joy. “The whole world is like clouds: it is constantly changing, only I have not noticed this before,” the king guessed. And with a smile he chose his path, turning the horse to the house. “
