Fairy-tales and the Human Mind
In the first two months of winter, the whole world celebrates Christmas, New Year, Hanukkah and as well as Kwanzaa. Santa Claus is the most popular fairy-tale of Christmas. The tale goes as follows: a child writes a letter to Santa Claus with a list of all things the child wants, then mails it to the north pole, where Santa Claus lives. Santa, then, makes a list of all the children in the world and decides if they have been naughty or nice. If they have been nice, the children receive all the presents they asked for but if they have been naughty that year, they get coal in their stocking. On the day of Christmas, Santa climbs down every chimney to either leave presents or coal.
In an all-Russian science conference, “Psychology of health and disease: The clinical-psychological approaches”, one of the speakers drew connection to these fairy-tales and to the psychology of a human mind and the following points were mentioned:
“Fairy tale — is a way to help people of different age with difficult situations,” said Veronika Vladimirovna Ilina (a teacher-psychologist of school № 21). She conducted a master-class which concluded with this statement, “The one of the methods for the correction of dark fear with primary pupils is fairy tale therapy”.
Fairy tale therapy promotes to correct problems and helps to develop personality. Fairy tale helps to remove a fear gradually, whilst correcting the internal behavior of the child. However, two questions arise; “Can every fairy tale be used in such practice?” and “What types of tales are there?” We can see the answers in the following points:
- They must be unique fictional tales. However, it is difficult to match a certain tale for one child, because these fairy tales were created not for psychological consultancy. Although, the chosen tales must have strong didactic and psychological aspects.
2. Psychocorrectional tales must match with child’s identity, but you must never show the blatant similarity between character of the tale and the child! Such tales must offer other ways to resolve problems like how to make friends, how to be happy when feeling down, etc.
3. Psyhotherapeutical tales are used for fear and phobia correction. These kind of tales are the most famous among the others. In the conference, we discussed fairy tales like “There is one girl who got nightmare”, “Darknessland”,“My scary tales” and “Mister Fear”.
4. Meditative tales are developed for the child to relax after the psychological functioning capacity had surpassed.
5. Didactical tales help to teach a child something new. For example, the tale by Satenik Kazaryan called “Two microbes lived” teaches how a child should take care of their teeth and if the child can’t do by themselves, there is a doctor who can help. But don’t be afraid of him!
Every one of us has a favorite fairy tale from childhood that soothed us and cheered us up. These tales moved us into a whole new world, one with a warm and light atmosphere and even with the most fantastical creatures. It helped us to understand the good and bad, the right and the wrong. Even as adults, fairy tales can help us. So, did you have your own fairy-tale which helped you show the way?
text Anna Bolgova
edition by Maria Filippovich
edition in english by Reshma Durai
