When I was a little girl, I was given a great gift. A traumatic childhood accident meant that I spent a lot of time in the hospital. One day, when I was seven years old and back in the children’s ward once again, my mother pressed a red leather-bound book into my hands to comfort and console me.
It was a beautiful edition of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, translated from German by Lucy Crane in 1882 and illustrated by her brother Walter. As soon as I opened the cover of that book and began to read, I was magically transported to a world filled with enchantment and peril. A young woman was locked away from the world in a tower, a princess was cursed to sleep for a hundred years, a girl must not laugh or speak for seven long years while she sews shirts from nettles to save her swan brothers. These stories gave me an electric shock of recognition. I was not the only one to feel lost and alone, to be facing sadness and pain, to feel powerless and silenced. Yet those fairytale characters faced their difficulties with courage and fortitude, and all triumphed in the end. They gave me hope that I, too, could win through.
This was the great gift that I was given – the realization that books and stories have the power to heal and help us. This was an epiphany for me, but it is not a new concept. The earliest known library in the world was built by Pharaoh Ramses II, who reigned in ancient Egypt between 1279 – and 1213 BC. It held over 10,000 papyrus rolls and, over its lintel, bore an inscription that called the library ‘the house of healing for the soul’.
Much later, the Roman writer Cicero used the term medicina animae (medicine for the soul) to describe the emotional release and psychic restoration that reading and listening to stories can bring us. Nowadays it is called bibliotherapy, and is a form of creative arts therapy that mindfully uses literature to bring emotional connection and well-being, new understanding, and wisdom into someone’s life.
Bibliotherapy is a dynamic interaction between a reader and a text. When someone sees themselves in a story, and identifies with a character and their situation, they project themselves into the narrative in a very personal way. The story comes to have a much deeper meaning for them, and so has the capacity to move them deeply and profoundly. This intimate connection with a text is the first step towards harnessing its therapeutic powers.
The second step is the cathartic release of emotional tensions such as anxiety, grief or rage. The word ‘catharsis’ comes from the ancient Greek ‘to purge’, and occurs when a book, a movie, a song or any kind of art evokes powerful emotions in someone, like a spontaneous storm of tears, leaving them with a new feeling of relief, lightness, liberation, and renewal.
The third step in bibliotherapy is the new insight achieved when the reader interrogates their emotional response to the text in order to more deeply understand themselves. It can be difficult, sometimes, to make sense of our feelings and emotional reactions, particularly when we are coping with grief, dealing with anxiety or depression, or struggling with existential worries such as loneliness, meaninglessness, and the fear of loss or death. By exploring why a particular story speaks to us so powerfully, we can come to comprehend some of our unconscious desires and drives, and build self-compassion and self-understanding.
The final step is realizing we are not alone in our struggles. Knowing that other people face the same dilemmas and difficulties helps foster a sense of universality and shared experience, and relieves feelings of difference and isolation.
There are a number of ways in which bibliotherapy can be used.
— Independent bibliotherapy is when someone mindfully seeks out books they hope will help them in their personal journey of growth and self-understanding. Books and stories offer comfort, stimulation, and knowledge, and teach us empathy, resilience, and self-esteem, and so prescribing ourselves certain books is a beautiful form of self-care.
— Creative bibliotherapy usually takes place in a group setting, with books, stories, and poems being read and discussed by a group of people, who then write their own texts either by journalling or by turning their lived experiences into fiction.
— Developmental bibliotherapy is used in educational settings to help children deal with childhood and adolescent issues like behavioral problems, bullying, or shyness.
— Prescriptive bibliotherapy is the use of self-help books and other texts in a clinical setting to help understand and modify harmful thought patterns, feelings, and actions. It is often combined with other types of therapy, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy, to help understand and manage major psychological issues such as eating disorders or substance abuse.
Interestingly, given my own personal epiphany, many psychologists find fairy tales are a wonderful resource for bibliotherapy, regardless of the age of the participant. There are a number of key reasons for this.
Fairy tales are often a child’s first experience of narrative transportation, that beguiling sensation of being so deeply immersed in a story that you lose a sense of your real-world surroundings. Often a child encounters the dangers and surprises of a fairy tale text in a place of comfort and safety, snuggled up beside a caring adult in a cozy spot, and that offers them a safe place where they can act out or experience difficult emotions and experiences.
The simplicity of the tales makes it very easy for a listener or reader to project themselves into the story, and the ultimate triumph of the protagonist over the malignant forces of the tale emboldens the child to feel that they too may prevail against their own problems. Most importantly, perhaps, fairy tales inspire a belief in goodness, justice, and love. This leads to a more optimistic outlook, vital in counteracting anxiety, depression and a feeling that only dark times lie ahead.
Fairy tales are gateways to other worlds, and so they open up our minds to other possibilities. Trees may be sentient, animals may have their own language, inanimate objects may be imbued with power. The more open we are to possibility, the more curious we are about the world, the more able we are to learn and grow and change.
The stories we encounter in childhood have a profound impact upon our imaginations. Graham Greene once said that the stories encountered in the first fourteen years of our lives have an excitement and revelation that cannot be equalled by narratives we read later. This means that returning to stories we loved passionately and intensely as children can give us all sorts of surprising insights into who we are now.
So how can we harness the therapeutic power of fairy tales for ourselves?
- Ask yourself what was the fairy tale that spoke to you most powerfully as a child.
- In your journal, write down everything you can remember about that fairy tale. Just write freely, don’t worry about putting it all in chronological order.
- Ask yourself why it was this particular fairy tale that made such a powerful impression upon you. Can you remember how you first encountered it? Was it read to you? By whom? Did you first see it in movie form? Write down all your memories related to the tale.
- What is your favourite element in the tale? Why?
- Now go and read the fairy tale again. Be aware there is not one ‘right’ version of the tale. Fairy tales are very old and have been told and retold over the centuries, changing every time. You may wish to discover other versions of the tale, told at different times and in different places.
- How different is your memory of the tale to its actuality? Why do you think you remembered some aspects and not others?
- Consider each character in the story. What role do they play? Could the story be told without them? Why not?
- Now think about each of the characters as being a hidden aspect of yourself. In what way does the fairytale allow expression of particular fears and longings of yours?
- Think about the key motifs in the story. What do they symbolise for you?
- How would you retell the story now, given the chance?
- Use the fairy tale as a launch-pad for your own creativity. Write a poem, draw a picture, design a fairy tale outfit, do whatever you like.
- Write your own life as a fairy tale, following the basic structure of some kind of catalyst, the event that precipitates the transformative journey, a series of tests and tasks, the dark moment in which it seems all is lost, the final struggle, the moment of triumph at the end, and the reward that you have won.
The true magic of fairy tales is not just to enchant us and offer us escape from sources of stress. They have the power to help us reconsider and rewrite our own story.
About the Author: Dr Kate Forsyth is an internationally renowned author, storyteller, and fairytale scholar. She has won several awards for her work, including the American Library Association Award for Best Historical Novel for her book Bitter Greens as well as Aurealis Awards for multiple titles. In recognition of her contribution to Australian fairytale culture, she was awarded the Australian Fairy Tale Society Award in 2018. Kate holds a Doctorate of Creative Arts in fairytale studies and is an accredited master storyteller with the Australian Guild of Storytellers. She also teaches writing retreats in locations including Australia, Fiji, Greece, and the United Kingdom. Her work has sold over 1.5 million copies across various formats and languages worldwide. To visit her page, please go to www.kateforsyth.com.au
