Fairy tale therapy is the development of creative abilities, the expansion of consciousness, helping the integration of the individual and improving interaction with the surrounding world.
Tale therapy is the direction of practical psychology. The main instrument is a fairytale metaphor.
A person projects unconscious experiences, anxieties and problems, cognizes himself, gets rid of undesirable and destructive manifestations.
Fairy tale therapy is conducted in various ways: discussing your favorite fairy tale; writing his own tale with further discussion; staging or playing fairy tales with real people as actors or with dolls.
Fairytale therapy is a psychological impact on a person through fairy tales. It promotes the development of a positive and multifaceted personality, helps to correct some problems, eliminate fears and inner complexes.
It is based on the process of building mental, sometimes even unconscious connections between characters, plot and actions in a fairy tale and what happens in reality. This is a kind of hint on how to do the right thing, which path to choose and evaluate yourself from the outside. Has no age limit. Children are most influenced, but when working with adults, sometimes deeper results are found.
In psychology, this is primarily one of the many tools that allow a person to understand the tangle of their own problems and find the right solutions in a difficult situation. It is here that fairy tale therapy is a method that is often used to work with adults.
Fairy tale therapy methods
Fairytale therapy as a method of correction is very effective and capable of solving serious psychological problems. The reason is the positive reaction of people to the fairy tale, regardless of age. Most patients do not have internal rejection and protest.
Psychologists distinguish four basic directions in this technique:
Diagnostic. Helps to determine the scenarios that a person uses when solving life situations. With the help of diagnostics, he determines character traits, strengths and weaknesses of the personality, talents, life positions, etc. Carrying out diagnostics, the specialist determines the root of the client’s problems.
Correctional. It helps a person create a harmonious image of himself, tune in to a healthy model of behavior, and correct negative models of perception of the world.
Prognostic. It helps a person to determine the result of his behavior and position in life at the moment.
Developing. Helps to relieve emotional and muscle tension, reduces anxiety, develops imagination, and facilitates adaptation to new conditions.
How to work
There are several ways to work with a fairy tale:
- Analysis and discussion of the fabulous situation.
- Tell a fairy tale to one person or to several.
- To tell a fairy tale, and then come up with a continuation for it, and the last narrator must definitely complete the story.
- Group inventing a fairy tale.
- The story of a fairy tale from the first persons (heroes) with their preliminary distribution among the group members.
- Rewriting fairy tales.
- Staging a fairy tale using puppets or as a performance.
- Drawing fairy tales, that is, while reading, the patient is asked to depict what he represents.
Fairytale therapy allows you to form a fresh look at the situation and display the patient’s internal conflict.
The principles of fairy tale therapy
For individual work or work in a group, the tale is compiled according to the problems characteristic of the given contingent. This tale is not yet known, therefore it is more interesting, especially if it is associated with an exciting problem or is offered as his personal tale. Such tales contain specially laid “clues”.
The actual problem is presented in a metaphorical form; As a rule, it is attributed to a significant hero – a prince, princess, king. The plots of the proposed fairy tales, created as psychotherapeutic ones, necessarily contain opportunities for changing the heroes of the fairy tale, as well as situations of choice that require them to make responsible decisions.
In those cases where a psychological problem comes into contact with an ethical one, where there are questions of values or, even more so, the meaning of life, an ethical component begins to be present in the fairy tale. For example, a fairy tale begins to suggest that uncontrollable aggressiveness, violence, selfishness, indifference to people and to oneself are bad. It’s not too good to spend life in dreams, vanity and whims.
The advantage of fairy tale therapy
The advantage of fairy tale therapy is that it contains many necessary technologies, from diagnostics, prevention, personality development and ending with correction.
- Smoothing barriers between psychologist and client. Allows you to quickly establish contact and tune in to further work.
- Analysis of problems deeply hidden in memory. Children’s grievances that negatively affect a person’s life can be traced in the client’s fairy tale invented by him.
- A way out of difficult, ambiguous life situations. On the examples of the heroes of fairy tales, you can find a way out of any turmoil, because all the stories have an instructive meaning. It is possible that someone has already experienced the same problems and was able to overcome them in a certain way.
- Actualization of the personal moments hidden by the client. Even if a person tries to hide the problems that bother him from the psychologist. Not considering them especially important, it will not be possible to do this, because the subconscious mind will still reveal them in the discussion or composition of fairy tales.
- Display of internal conflict. The opportunity is given to identify contradictions in oneself and, through a fairy tale, reflect on them.
Types of fairy tales
Modern science knows about the existence of such types of fairy tales:
- About the animal world. This type is considered the most ancient, composed of the disintegrated myths.
- Such tales can be for both children and adults.
- It is generally accepted that they arose in the Middle Ages and in their plots suggest the presence of everyday scenes with the presence of something unusual.
- Examples of such tales are found only in the middle of the 19th century, and their roots go far back to mythical legends.
Fairytale therapy is a method of influencing the consciousness and forms of raising children, which can cover absolutely all known types of fairy tales.
