Therapeutic Storywriting

A Practical Guide to Developing Emotional Literacy in Primary Schools

Trisha Waters

• Publisher: David Fulton Publishers
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781843121169
• eBook ISBN: 9781135397685
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Literacy work can provide a therapeutic context in which to support children with emotional and behavioural difficulties in mainstream schools. This text provides a clear theoretical rationale for therapeutic storywriting.

Chapter 1

Introduction to Therapeutic Storywriting

Story helps us understand our lives — to explain who we are, what has happened to us and what might happen. (Pie Corbett 2001)

Story holds a magic for children. Its symbolic language, of monsters and mythical creatures, of heroes and heroines, of terrifying obstacles overcome, can seem to convey meaning more powerfully to a child than the best thought-out rational arguments. While anyone who has told children stories will be familiar with the rapt gaze of their spellbound audience, it is also interesting to note the power of children's own storywriting to similarly engage their attention.

It is particularly interesting to observe that many children with emotional difficulties, who may find it hard to stay on task in the classroom, can suddenly become completely focused and motivated when storywriting. By playing with different characters, scenes and plots of which they are the creators, storywriting seems to provide a way for the child to explore who they are and what they feel within the protected world of the imaginary. The opportunity to express their internal world through story metaphor can be beneficial for all children, but especially so for emotionally anxious children whose own life ‘stories' may have been particularly painful or complicated. The task of this book is to unravel and tease out the process by which the magic web of story is spun — not to analyse for the sake of it, but in order to free the story threads where they are caught and support the healing that is possible by enabling children to weave their own personal narratives.

Structure and play in story

Young children at play spin their own narratives of make-believe as they imitate the adult world and try to make sense of their own place within it. A written story continues this suspension of everyday reality but places the narrative within a structure where events are sequenced with a beginning, middle and end. The plot develops when something happens that requires actions from the characters, and their response in resolving dilemmas is what brings the story to its conclusion. While all teachers of the literacy hour will be familiar with this structure of story, the significance of story metaphor contained within this structure and its resonance with the child's internal feeling world are perhaps not so well understood. Through storywriting children are able to project their own feelings onto different characters and experiment with how these might behave in different situations. In many ways storywriting can be considered as a natural progression from the play of the young child. Both involve what the child psychologist Winnicott (1999: 2) describes as ‘the perpetual human task of keeping inner and outer reality separate yet interrelated.' Both explore the creation of different realities and are capable of absorbing the child's undivided attention. The idea of story as a development from play and its appropriateness for supporting emotionally anxious children of junior school age are discussed in more detail in chapter 2.

The significance of metaphor

Children express their fears, their hopes and their worries in story not by stating them directly but through the oblique language of metaphor. Fear may take the form of a journey through a dark wood and the dread of being overwhelmed by the image of a giant, while the possibility of change or transformation may be represented by a magic object. Such metaphor is not only the language of story but also of dreams and the unconscious. Children live closer to this world of unconscious feeling because, as Piaget (1970: 711) showed, their abstract cognitive abilities are not yet fully developed. It is for this reason that story metaphor can touch children in a way that reasoned argument often cannot.

The psychodynamic view of the psyche considers that the exploration of unconscious feelings through metaphor can help reduce emotional anxiety and the resulting defensive behaviour patterns. The psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, who witnessed extremes of behaviour while imprisoned in a concentration camp, spent many years examining the link between unconscious pressures and behaviour. In his later work at the Orthogenic School in Chicago, where he supported children with emotional and behavioural difficulties, he pioneered the use of story as a means of reducing emotional anxiety. He considers that:

When unconscious material is to some degree permitted to come to awareness and worked through in imagination, its potential for causing harm — to ourselves or others — is much reduced; some of its forces can then be made to serve positive purposes. (1991: 7)

Such unconscious material does not confine itself to the presence of therapists, and many teachers will intuitively pick up concerns about a child's emotional state through reading their stories. When the headteacher of a special EBD school recently told me that she always finds the first story a new child writes for his teacher to be particularly significant, I was reminded of Jung, who in his autobiography (1963) remarks how he asked patients about the dream they had the previous night before deciding whether to take them on as a client. It is this awareness of personal metaphor as a significant means of communication that the therapeutic teacher needs to develop. While some familiarity with archetypal images is helpful, real insight into the meaning of children's metaphor does not come by consulting a dictionary of symbols but through reflection, intuitive understanding and knowledge of the child concerned. In Therapeutic Storywriting interpretations are never made explicit to children, and this point, along with other issues relating to boundaries and confidentiality, is discussed in chapter 2.

Story as a narrative of identity

The projection of different aspects of themselves onto story characters allows children to explore their own identity. In the safety of make-believe they can explain who they are, what has happened to them and their feelings about what might happen to them in the future. Children, like adults, have different aspects of self that come into play in different situations. Therapeutic Storywriting uses the psychosynthesis term ‘subpersonalities' to refer to these aspects of self that can be projected onto different story characters. According to subpersonality theory, the core sense of self often identifies with a particular subpersonality but is also able to separate from all subpersonalities. The core self can be compared to the conductor of an orchestra with our subpersonalities likened to the various instruments. Just as a conductor needs to be familiar with all the orchestral instruments in order to bring them in at the right time with the appropriate volume, so the core self can only be truly in control when it has identified and integrated all its different subpersonalities.

In many ways the role of narrator in storywriting can be likened to that of the core self. In order for the child to take up the objective narrative position, they need to become familiar with their story characters, bring them in at the appropriate time and integrate them with other characters. When these story characters represent projected aspects of the child's personality, i.e. subpersonalities, the process of storywriting can lead to an exploration of the self. Chapters 3 and 4 explore subpersonality theory and practical ways in which it can support Therapeutic Storywriting work.

Re-storying and the search for meaning

Storywriting can provide the child with an opportunity to reframe or ‘re-story' their personal experiences. This is particularly important for those children who have experienced difficult life situations. They may feel shame and a sense of being different from other children. By transposing characters and events in their lives into the metaphor of a story, the child is able to play with different outcomes to actual dilemmas. By re-storying past events in the safety of the metaphor, the child seeks to make sense of what has happened to them. Cattanach who writes about stories in play therapy, describes this process as the ‘negotiation of meaning … a way to place events and characters into a cultural perspective.' (1997: 25) This cultural perspective may be achieved through the child's story setting but can also be supported by the teacher's interventions and her own story, as discussed in chapters 7 and 8.

Narrative as a specific mode of thought

Story has been used both orally and in the written form throughout the ages to pass on cultural information, social morals and spiritual wisdom. What is it that makes this mode of communication so powerful that it will often be used instead of a more analytical means of communication? The psychologist Bruner (1986: 11) considers that there are two modes of thought by which we convey meaning: the ‘logico-scientific' and the ‘narrative', both of which ‘can be used as means for convincing another'.The logico-scientific mode is associated with left-brain activity and uses analysis and logic. The narrative mode has a stronger association with right-brain activity and uses the visual, intuitive and imaginary functions. The narrative mode uses the language of metaphor. Both the logico-scientific and the narrative are essential functions. It is a question of balance. To focus solely on the logico-scientific mode can result in a dry, rational but unfeeling nature, whereas to focus solely on the narrative mode may result in feelings being uncontained by reason. To the degree that we analyse the structure of story, put the emphasis on style, ask children to just write from a particular modelled viewpoint or focus solely on grammar and punctuation, we are cultivating an analytical approach to writing. These are important skills but they do not reflect the intuitive narrative mode in which feelings are expressed through imagery and from which the essential nature of story arises. We cultivate a narrative approach to writing when we allow children the space and time to delve into their personal pool of images and enter what Pie Corbett (2002: 8) calls the ‘fictional space'. This is a place where the child listens to their inner voice and is guided by the ‘storyteller in the head'.

The therapeutic storywriting model

Therapeutic Storywriting has been particularly developed as a special educational needs (SEN) intervention which uses the medium of storywriting to support children with emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBDs) in junior schools. Therapeutic Storywriting works through metaphor, both within children's own storywriting and within stories written by the teacher, in order to address issues that may be too emotionally overwhelming for children to talk about directly. Research (Waters 2001) indicates that this approach, which encourages children to write from their core sense of self, can also increase children's motivation to write and in this way supports the development of both emotional and academic literacy.

The model presented here is designed mainly as a therapeutic teaching tool for SEN teachers to use with small groups or individual children with EBDs. However, many of the principles underpinning the use of story to support emotional literacy can be applied to work with all children and may be of interest to a wider range of teachers. Chapter 9, which looks at the use of the guided imaginary journey as a way into writing, broadens the focus from the group or individual and includes suggestions for working with the whole class.

A therapeutic teaching approach

The Therapeutic Storywriting model outlined in this book grew out of my own experience of teaching children with EBDs in both special and mainstream schools. My additional therapeutic training has led me to explore the overlap between the fields of education and child therapy, both of which are concerned with the development of the child. A therapeutic teaching approach, such as Therapeutic Storywriting, involves the development of teaching methods that are informed by psychological and therapeutic thinking. Historically, educationists seem to have been rather wary of linking therapeutic ideas to education, perhaps considering them to be solely about feelings and not about thinking. Likewise, therapists have sometimes been rather professionally territorial...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Preface
• 1 Introduction to Therapeutic Storywriting
• 2 Principles of Therapeutic Storywriting
• 3 Subpersonalities and a Model of the Self
• 4 Working with Subpersonality Polarities
• 5 Setting up Therapeutic Storywriting Groups and Individual Sessions
• 6 Ways into Story and their Settings in Fantasy or External Reality
• 7 Receiving the Child's Story
• 8 The Teacher's Story
• 9 The Guided Imaginary Journey as a Way into Writing
• Afterword
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index