STORYTELLING THERAPY UNDER THE SPOTLIGHT TO MARK NATIONAL WEEK

To mark National Storytelling Week, a De Montfort University (DMU) psychology lecturer is placing the therapeutic value of literature under the spotlight.

Brian Brown is Principal Lecturer in Psychology at DMU in Leicester and has championed the benefits of storytelling in therapy and the power of anecdotes to catalyse positive change in patients.

And National Storytelling Week, running from Saturday 30 January to Saturday 6, February, comes as a timely reminder that stories are being increasingly viewed as more than just a pass time.

Professor Brown said: “Getting people to change their attitudes and think differently can be difficult, so stories are a much more long lasting way of trying to get people to alter their beliefs and think about their problems.”

Storytelling goes hand-in-hand with Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). The use of stories in therapy is called bibliotherapy– a branch of psychotherapy which uses literature topics related to illness or people’s problems.  Their addition to the therapy process helps with recognition of these problems and reduces their negative impact by making sense of and rationalising them.

Professor Brown added: “By offering new ways of thinking about things which are user-friendly and non-challenging, it is easier to take up a new viewpoint. Stories often fly under our radar, but they have been around longer than psychotherapy and they are often about personal experience, so they are really useful.”

In 2004, Storytelling in Therapy was published – a book co-authored by the University professor, with Paul and Rhiannon Crawford, who are academic and clinical psychologists respectively.

Professor Brown said: “Inspiration for research came from real experience of clinical psychology, and the application of stories within therapy has something real to offer the practitioner as well as the academic. The theory has been used for the training of mental health nurses and clinical psychologists.

“To start, we studied how the approach could be applied to patients and looked at fairy stories, myths and legends, as well as celebrity stories, where parallels and analogies can be drawn.”