Last Updated on March 17, 2023 by Mike Robinson
Because of importance of stories, I find it difficult to adjust to losing them. In fact, I don’t want to lose the literary elegance of stories or their delicate (yet exquisite) capacity to explore the emotional realm and aid in organizing and navigating it. We are storytellers of tales through which we have learned, and at the same time, these tales have evolved into a path, a coded map, to get past both group and personal fears. We want to transmit and leave a mark and lessons for the future that transcend their time because the narrative is a part of our evolutionary process as the social beings that we are.
The evolution of narratives
As a species, the importance of stories goes back thousands of years. We told our earliest tales and narratives using symbols and representations. We share the details of our daily lives with one another in them, emphasizing the threats, triumphs, and extraordinary in particular.
Our reflection and imprint are visible in the cave paintings. It is not hard to picture the group gathered around the storyteller, who is responsible for maintaining the collective memory as he recounts, dances, and performs the feats depicted on the rocks and preserved in his mind. The forces of the interior emotional currents that are projected to the exterior are controlled through these ritual narratives in an effort to comprehend and contain them. These images, myths, and tales change as humankind’s collective and individual minds do; they change as we gain a better understanding of the forces that drive our emotions and begin to claim them as our own.
The role of children’s stories
In children’s stories, we see a similar evolutionary process. Children are initially drawn to stories that are both magical and realistic, featuring equally fantastic characters who have supernatural abilities that are beyond their control as children. These archetypes, forced caricatures, and depictions of good and evil serve as representations of the various emotional states that a young child struggles to unite into one person.
The stories have a similar format. It presents us with a loss or conflict that the protagonist must deal with, and as the plot progresses, both the supporting cast and the antagonistic forces are introduced. As the plot develops, the protagonist either develops these qualities in himself or learns that he already had them without realizing it, and the story becomes one where challenges are overcome and the evil is subdued by the skill and goodness of the allies.
The Qualities of the Symbolism
According to Carl Jung, myths, legends, and stories are archetypes that emerge from the unconscious and undergo iconographic transformation with each epoch while presumably maintaining their meanings and contents. Then, through the use of the imagination, these contents will manifest as games, drawings, or self-contained stories. Making sense of the child’s experiences without making them personal to the child allows for easier pain management because of the challenges and problems that occur in the stories.
The difficulties and problems presented in the stories enable the child to make sense of his experiences without internalizing them, making it easier for him to manage his pain. This proves that importance of stories is real. They permit the development of one’s own experience through the metamorphosis of the portrayed characters. They have an attraction to those who present narratives in which they unwittingly recognize themselves and which facilitate intuitive integrations that they can later elaborate on consciously.
Similar stories, which contain the dreamlike and magical parts of the stories, make it easier for people to deal with pain, hardship, and the uncertainty of the victories of growth. The power of stories is even stronger if they hear them while sitting in the warmth of a mother’s or father’s lap. Or by a loving grandfather or grandmother who walks with the child on the journey of initiation with a voice that changes to a whisper. When children hear stories in this way, they become an intimate act in which the child goes on this journey of discovery, and the monsters and sphinxes he meets cannot harm them because of the strong arms that protect them.
The therapeutic importance of stories
You can reimagine your life or the challenging parts of it, change them, and, in the process, change who you are. As a result, narratives take on a healing role; they become an integral part of the artistic practices that help mend broken hearts. I believe that all or most therapists who work with children have a natural ability to tell a good story that the child can relate to and use in therapy. Thus, stories written specifically for a young reader are born.
This act of making up a story, which could be by parents, relatives, or a therapist, makes the story even more charming because it puts the child at the center of the mental actions of adults, who not only pay attention to what the child does or doesn’t do but also to his feelings, which he may not be able to fully understand yet, and his thoughts or beliefs, which he doesn’t dare form or see.
