The author of the article is Kirill Karpenko. The article was published: School psychologist. — 2011. — No. 17.
Fairy tale therapy has practically no age restrictions. Therefore, for practical psychologists working with both children and adults, this technique is very attractive. The fairy tale influences the client softly and delicately, does not cause his resistance when perceiving painful information. Children from the earliest years get used to fairy tales, perceive them as something warm, close. However, fairy tales are loved not only by children, but also by adults, because science fiction and detective stories, in fact, are also fairy tales, since they are fictional stories. The methods of fairy tale therapy are convenient and effective, therefore this direction of practical psychology is becoming more and more popular among specialists every day. At the same time, there are very few substantial works on this topic.
Therefore, the new series of the publishing house «Genesis» «Fairytale Therapy: Theory and Practice» should not go unnoticed by psychologists. The series opens with a book by Igor Viktorovich Vachkov, President of the International Society of Fairy Tale Therapists, author of such books as “Psychology for Toddlers, or the Tale of the Most Soulful Science”, “Fairytale Therapy. Development of self-awareness through a psychological fairy tale”, “Metaphorical training”, as well as many developing and psycho-correctional fairy tales.
«Introduction to fairy tale therapy» is both theory and practice. The first section of the monograph is devoted to theoretical issues of fairy tale therapy: the concept of «fairy tale», «fairy tale therapy», typology of fairy tales, fairy tale metaphor, which is the core of fairy tale therapy, etc. Integrative fairy tale therapy was defined by the author as «a direction in practical psychology that, using the metaphorical resources of a fairy tale and genres close to it), allows people to develop self-awareness and build special levels of interaction with each other, which creates conditions for the formation of their subjectivity.
The second section describes fairy tale therapeutic methods and techniques. A separate chapter is devoted to the use of parables. The third section contains the Catalog of Fairytale Therapy Games and Exercises.
This publication will be useful for experienced fairy tale therapists, and even more so for beginners. The former will be able to clarify their methodological views and find new fairy tale therapeutic games and exercises. The latter will form an adequate idea of the method and will receive a good base of methods for fairy tale therapy. In the words of Igor Vachkov, “Fairy tale therapy is a worthy tool from the arsenal of a practical psychologist. And it should be used as efficiently as possible. The presented book will be a reliable assistant in this.