Storytelling: An enjoyable and effective therapeutic tool

Storytelling has great potential for stimulating insight and behavior change, particularly when client and clinician seem to have reached an impasse, as is frequently the case with adolescent clients. The storytelling process provides a viable alternative to the traditional therapeutic communication style in which the client is the only storyteller. It provides a means to circumvent client resistance and present new concepts and paradigms for healthy behavior. This paper provides a practical guide for the use of therapeutic metaphors and storytelling as an intervention technique, provides examples of successful interventions made through the storytelling process with both adolescent and adult clients, and outlines suggestions for the effective use of storytelling as a therapeutic tool.Joyce Divinyi, MS, a licensed professional counselor, is a consultant with The Wellness Connection, Peachtree City, Georgia, providing wellness education and mental health training programs and individual and family counseling services. She was formerly the executive director of a residential treatment program for adolescent girls. Reprint requests should be sent to the author at The Wellness Connection, 125 Highgreen Ridge, Peachtree City, GA 30269.     

训练对6岁儿童友谊特性认知发展的影响

研究目的是寻找促进幼儿对友谊特性认知发展的有效干预措施。采用有结构的故事讲解加系列提问的方法,对实验组２０名６岁幼儿进行为期２周的训练,结果表明,这种训练有效地促进了他们对友谊特性的认知发展,其主要效果表现在互相帮助和冲突解决两个方面。     

Personality characteristics of highly generative adults as assessed in Q-sort ratings of life stories

The present study compared the personality characteristics assessed in life stories of 40 highly generative adults to those in the life stories of a contrasting sample of 30 less generative adults. Life-story interviews of all 70 subjects were rated with the California Adult Q-Sort (CAQ; Block, 1961). The results were compared to the “expert” generativity CAQ profile compiled by Peterson and Klohnen (1995). The results indicated that highly generative adults were more likely to construct life stories indicative of such positive generativity characteristics as “behaves in a giving way toward others” and “is turned to for advice and reassurance” compared to adults low in generativity. Furthermore, the highly generative adults related life-story accounts in which negative generativity qualities such as “has hostility toward others” and “is self-indulgent” were more uncharacteristic than those expressed in the low-generativity adults' stories. The study adds to a growing empirical literature on the meaning and manifestations of generativity in adult lives and suggests that the CAQ is a useful tool for uncovering personality characteristics expressed in the life-story accounts generated by adults.     

COGNITIVE THEISM: SOURCES OF ACCOMMODATION BETWEEN SECULARISM AND RELIGION

Abstract. Religion persists, even within enlightened secular society, because it has adaptive functions. In particular, Ralph Wendell Burhoe's theory holds that religion is the repository of cultural wisdom that most encourages mutual altruism among nonkin, long-term social survival, and human progress. This article suggests a variant of Burhoe's rationalized naturalistic view. Cognitive theism is a proposal that secularists sometimes take religion on its own terms by suspending disbelief about God. If we consider particular human capacities and limitations in memory, perception, personality, and motivation, the regulated “mind expansion” of cognitive theism may help us to evaluate, coordinate, and invigorate things in a modern environment. In this environment, communicative and travel technologies have led to a high loading of consciousness with a historically unusual diverse range of experiences and responsibilities, a high rate of cultural change relative to biological evolution, and a tendency to factionalize. Burhoe's extension of the concept of symbiosis to the coevolution of culture and genes is modified here in recognition of individual differences and of individuals' potential for choosing strategies, recombining in groups, and learning. In human biocultural symbiont pools, cultural phenomena can evolve while changing partners in a dance with genetic substrates, a dance that broadly supports these substrates. In the context of diversity and incessant change in a large predominantly secular community, Judeo-Christian monotheism can have a valuable advisory unifying function.     

Reflections on a wounded and bleeding temenos

COVID-19, Black Lives Matter, and financial and political turmoil have uprooted our sense of personal and collective safety and predictability. Analysts are faced with professional and personal challenges, as well as a charge to help make sense of this new normal. This reflective piece focuses on the author’s thoughts on a wounded and bleeding temenos. She grapples with the new reality of analysis carried out via technology (e.g. Zoom or telehealth). The article interweaves personal experiences with theoretical and professional reflections on two Jewish myths that relate to creating temenos or sacred space in the face of ancient disasters. Specifically, she discusses Choni HaMagel, a first-century BCE Jewish scholar and miracle-maker who prays for relief from a drought from inside a sacred circle. She also tells the tale of four Chassidic Rebbes who face crisis from a sacred space in the forest. The author frames this piece with two personal and numinous dreams dreamt during the pandemic; one offering scenes of destruction and one offering hope for a future transformation.     

State education,spirituality, and culture: teachers’ personal and professional stories of negotiating the nexus

This paper explores the implications of spirituality for teaching and learning in multicultural state schools through the examination of several teachers’ personal and professional narratives. In attempting to capture the intangible, these narratives provide insights into the possibilities, both conscious and unconscious, of creating a climate that fosters spirituality. The classroom stories of a spiritual nature that the teachers recounted (while many and varied) revealed some common themes that related to the climate of the classrooms. Sensitive issues of faith, beliefs, and culture emerged and the teachers’ narratives illustrate ways in which inclusive communities can be fostered. The paper provides examples of cultural and social inclusiveness with a focus on two major themes: the relationship between life and death, and fostering a sense of belonging.     

Personal and parents’ life stories in patients with borderline personality disorder

Patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) display disturbances in understanding self and others. We examined whether these disturbances extended to how patients described their personal and parents’ life stories and to measures of identity, alexithymia, empathy, and emotional intelligence. Thirty BPD patients and 30 matched control participants described personal and parents’ life stories and completed measures of identity disturbance, alexithymia, empathy, and emotional intelligence. Compared to the controls, patients with BPD described their personal and their parents’ life stories more negatively and with fewer themes of agency and communion fulfillment. Patients and controls showed equally complex reasoning about their personal life stories, but patients displayed less complexity and more self‐other confusion, when reasoning about their parents’ stories. Patients also differed from controls on identity disturbance, alexithymia, and empathy. The results suggest that patients’ storied understanding of themselves and others are disturbed and should be taken into account to better understand BPD.     

Beyond his story: from interpretation to impact of stories from different cultures

This paper deals with the history of psychoanalysis (Freud) and analytical psychology (Jung) in the light of recent developments and considers the release of new creativity in the field after its deconstruction. Cross-cultural contributions in the form of teaching stories are estimated to be of relevance, while the emphasis will be on what we, as analysts, can learn from these teachings, rather than interpreting them in the more traditional way in which such stories can be shown to fit analytical theory.
The most crucial debate in psychoanalysis of the recent era centres around stories and the deconstruction thereof. It is the debate between Lacan and Derrida on the interpretation of a crucial story (Poe's story, The Purloined Letter). The core of their views will be discussed in this paper in the light of the major differences between Freud and Jung. Whereas Freud's theoretical core-complex is closely related to Lacan's phallocentric Truth, it is Derrida who speaks of germination and dissemination as the way in which Truth manifests itself. Derrida's thought on text and words is very close to Jung's conceptions of the image and symbol, in which there is no monotheistic paradigm ruling theory