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Author
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Comment
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Calaloola
Registered User
(11/3/05 7:44 pm)
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Fairytales as therapy/ re-writing your life
Hope I'm not going over old ground here, but I'm interested in books that deal with using fairytales as therapy.
I'm particulary interested in those that see fairytales as a way to deal with problems (by creating or "re-writing" the focus of your real life problem according to a fairytale) AND NOT simply using fairy tales to contextualise your problems, or relating your problems to fairytales in a metaphoric sense.
I realise this is all a bit vague and convoluted(!) but I'm going on a half-remembered conversation about a book here. I don't expect to find the book in question, but would be very interested in any books dealing with the subject. The person I spoke to was studying psychiatric nursing, hence his interest in the subject and I'm interested in books in this vein.
Hope you can help :)
Edited by: Calaloola at: 11/3/05 7:45 pm
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kristiw
Unregistered User
(11/3/05 9:01 pm)
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kristiw
This reminds me of something called The Medea Project, theater for incarcerated women. Essentially, this amazing woman, Rhodessa Jones, goes into prisons and does theater productions with female inmates. Myth is central to the project; she described it as "hanging your life on a story" and it focuses on women telling their own narratives in a way that lends them a mythic, performative tone. It isn't a book itself, but there is a book about it by Rena Fraden, "Imagining Medea."
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(11/3/05 11:36 pm)
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therapy and fairy tales
Try this thread.
Good luck!
Edited by: Veronica Schanoes at: 11/4/05 12:20 am
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wrightales
Registered User
(11/4/05 7:32 pm)
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fairy tale therapy
Blue Beyond Blue (subtitled Extaordinary Tales for Ordinary Dilemas) is a book of fairy tales by Lauren Slater. She is a therapist who uses fairy tales in her work often having her patients write fairy tales of portions of their lives to help them work out problems. The stories in the book are her own original stories and they are astonishing.
It is a great book!
Lisa
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princessterribel
Registered User
(11/5/05 5:38 am)
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Re: fairy tale therapy
This book may be of particular use to you! I am focusing on the Cinderella story for my dissertation and when considering the psychoanalytical approach I bought a very small but useful book called,
'The truth about Cinderella: A Darwinian view of parental love'
By Martin Daly and Margo Wilson.
ISBN: 0-297-84161-0
I just found it on ebay by chance, but it is also all over Amazon so you shouldn't have a problem getting a copy and it doesn't even cost that much. The book focuses upon the motifs of the cinderella story and about how it relates to issues of child abuse or stereotyping. There are a few case studies which show how the child will often pretend to be a cinderella...these are very interesting and I suppose they relate to how the child, or troubled person will relate their lives to the fairy tale, almost creating their own tale as a result.
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Judith Berman
Registered User
(11/7/05 8:15 pm)
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narrative and healing
A couple of articles come to mind on narrative more broadly and psychotherapeutic healing. One is "Narration in the psychoanalytic dialogue," by Roy Schafer, in W.J.T. Mitchell, ed., ON NARRATIVE, University of Chicago Press. The articles in the book originally appeared in the journal CRITICAL INQUIRY, volume 7 numbers 1 and 4. Another article is Claude Levi-Strauss's "The effectiveness of symbols," in his STRUCTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY volume 1--this one is specifically about myth and shamanic healing. Some Native American examples: Paul Zolbrod's article "When artifacts speak, what can they tell us?" in Brian Swann and Arnold Krupat, eds., RECOVERING THE WORD; Keith Basso's WISDOM SITS IN PLACES, especially the chapter "Speaking with names"; and finally, some of Barre Toelken's comments on Navajo healingway ceremonies--maybe in THE ANGUISH OF SNAILS? I'll have to look for that last.
Judith
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katrinablair
Unregistered User
(11/10/05 9:36 pm)
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Fairytales as therapy
Check out: Symbols of the Soul: Therapy and GUidance through Fairy Tales by Birgitte Brun, Ernst W. Pedersen, and Marianne Runberg. Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. 1993.
I am starting my thesis work and this is one of the major parts of my thesis. I was just cruising through tonight before I head off to a conference this weekend. I will try to reconnect next week. In the meantime check out Symbols of the Soul. Great book. I will try to pull together the list I have but hopefully this will help in the meantime.
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Calaloola
Registered User
(11/20/05 7:28 am)
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Re: Fairytales as therapy
Thanks all, will see what I can find of these at work/on Amazon. Let me know if you have any other thoughts...
:)
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