Creativity and the Creative Process: Storytelling

Abstract

This paper discusses the benefits of storytelling in therapy, particularly for the expressive therapist. The paper explores the way that creativity and the creative process are key elements to storytelling and that the more creativity is embraced, the greater potential for learning and growth for the client. Three case examples are described and compared, giving different examples of how storytelling may be used. Two of the examples refer to Animal Attribution Story Telling Technique (AASTT) and Tree Theme Method (TTM). The paper does not attempt to cover all aspects and possibilities of storytelling, but offers to focus on the way that creativity is involved in storytelling in therapeutic sessions that give a large focus to the concept of storytelling.

Keywords: creativity, creative process, storytelling, narrative, Animal Attribution Story Telling Technique, Tree Theme Method

Creativity and the Creative Process: Storytelling

Introduction

Creativity is often perceived as a talent that a select few are born with. It is a strange and unique gift that is untouchable by all others. Creativity is also often seen as a commodity, something extra that is used for entertainment and for the sake of provoking a reaction from an audience. Creativity is something that can be essential to one person’s life, becoming a fundamental part of that person’s definition of self. On the contrary, it can be something that is feared by another person. For this other person it may represent risk, danger, and failure. This other person may not even be aware of the ways in which he or she may be using creativity in his or her life and in how he or she perceives and communicates.

Storytelling is a practice that spans across all cultures and across time. In fact, it defines culture and defines time because it is the way that we learn about our culture and about the past. The way that we tell stories gives insight to the way that we see the world around us and the events that happen to us. Stories are told in a language, which not only consists of words, but also of certain symbols and concepts that would be recognizable by those telling and listening to the story (van Nijnatten, 2007). This can happen in a context of a specific country, town, era, event, or even between two people with a common understanding. The language of a story even holds meaning that may differ slightly or extremely from one individual to another, even if they do come from a common understanding.

Stories are also organized and structured in different ways. Western culture often structures stories on a clear timeline whereas other cultures may not tell their stories in chronological order. Western culture also often sees the story of a life as a whole, where the character remains the same character throughout, only put into different settings and events (van Nijnatten, 2007). Because children are taught to expect stories to follow these certain structures, they will expect their own lives and stories to follow this structure as well. As these children grow older, they will continue to learn the way that stories are supposed to be organized and they will attempt to organize their lives, experiences, and identity in these ways. If they cannot succeed in this, then they may view themselves as different or wrong and may worry about not being understood by those around them (van Nijnatten, 2007).

Other typical characteristics of storytelling in western culture include having a beginning, middle, and end, as well as having some sort of meaning or moral behind the story. This speaks to or perhaps shapes our inherent drive to make meaning out of our lives and the things that happen in it. Stories can be focused around a certain theme or emotion and they can be told in an optimistic or a pessimistic way. There are many different ways that one single story could be told. Gaining an understanding of this is a powerful tool that can be used to understand and interact with other people or other cultures. This understanding can also be used to help rework the way that you perceive your own life story.

Now, creativity certainly plays a part in fictional and metaphorical stories, but considering that a single story could be told in many different ways, it can be argued that the telling of any story involves some level of creativity. It is when creativity is embraced that storytelling can become a therapeutic tool. The creative process of forming and describing characters, settings, and events allows the storyteller to make choices about what he or she will disclose about the characters, settings and events. It will give the storyteller an opportunity to distance his or herself from the story if it is in reference to a personal experience. The option of telling the story in third person rather than first person can also enhance this distance.

Creativity can be seen as a way of coming up with ideas and it can also be seen as a way of coming up with solutions to those ideas. The creative aspect of storytelling allows the storytelling to be open to possibilities and to actively create solutions to challenges or find explanations for actions. There are many ways to approach the idea of storytelling in a therapeutic setting. The therapist may choose to focus more closely on telling stories of the client’s experiences or the therapist may focus more fictional or metaphoric storytelling. Either way, there will be evidence to the client’s perceptions of issues and thoughts that may bring out certain emotions in the client. Storytelling itself offers a base medium that is understandable and structured for those clients who may be intimidated by other less structured forms of expression. The therapist may use this knowledge and work with story structures and themes that are very familiar to the client or they may also find ways to teach the client to break away from their typical way of reflecting upon ideas and experiences.

I will present three case examples of storytelling being used in a therapeutic way. These three examples offer only glimpses into the many ways that storytelling can be incorporated into a therapeutic process. In each of these examples, storytelling is the main practice of the sessions, but there are also many ways that storytelling may used as a smaller addition to other techniques that may be the main focus of sessions. The first example is called the Animal Atribution Story Telling Technique, used in a family therapy context. The second example is called the Tree Theme Method, used in a one on one occupational therapy setting. The third is my own reflections on experimenting with an intermodal transfer involving story telling.

Animal Attribution Story Telling Technique

Arad (2004) describes Animal Attribution Story Telling Technique (AASTT) as a type of family play therapy. Family play therapy may include techniques such as puppet interviews, storytelling, and using children’s drawings. AASTT is a type of storytelling that, in this case example, allowed for a lot of imagination and creativity because it was very open ended and there was no use of props, so the ideas came completely from the family members’ imaginations.

Arad (2004) describes a family of four: a mother, father, nine-year-old son, and four-year-old daughter. The son was the reason for the family’s referral to the therapist because of his Oppositional Defiance Disorder diagnosis. This means that he was often unwilling to cooperate or follow rules both in school and at home because the family was having more and more difficulty dealing with his outbursts. This was a case in which it is extremely difficult to get the child of main focus to participate in any sort of discussions or activities, which would be necessary if there were to be any sort of change.

Arad (2004) explains how the therapist informed Roy, the son, that he would not be forced to participate in anything that he did not want to and that it was up to him when he wanted to join in on the activities. This gave Roy the feeling that he had a little more freedom and when the therapist described the game that they were going to play, he decided that he did want to participate.

The therapist had described the process of AASTT, explaining that each family member would get a chance to choose an animal to represent each of their family members, including his or herself, and then tell a story using those animal characters. This idea sparked Roy’s attention and he was eager to go first. The therapist explained to him that one rule was that the family members had to go in order from youngest to oldest, so to prevent the younger family members from being influenced by the older. Since Roy was so eager to participate, he was willing to make this compromise.

Making a compromise was a huge step by itself, showing the instant benefit of giving the child a sense of freedom and also the control over the story he would create. Giving an individual permission to create something entirely of their own gives them a sense of control and power that he or she may feel he or she is usually lacking.

Each member of the family took their turn telling a story. They were all encouraged to only refer to the animals that they assigned each member, and not to the actual family members. They were also asked to try not to tell a story that they had heard before or a story based on real life. This gave a lot of distance for each member so that each of them could talk about the animal characters and not feel like they were necessarily talking about their family members. After each person told his or her story, the therapist would ask him or her to title the story and to assign a moral to the story. This would allow for the whole family to go back to each story and to discuss what happened in the stories and how each character played a part and was affected by the events of the stories.

The ability for each family member to tell his or her own story with his or her own set of characters gave each a sort of language of communication of their own that the rest of the family could revolve discussions around. Creativity was not only used to create the stories, but to think of solutions or alternatives to conflicts that arose in some of the stories. The therapist was also always sure to guide the family members in first describing each animal character and then taking any characters that were depicted negatively and guide the family to finding the positive or forgivable aspects to that character.

In many ways, the stories that were told could be related to issues or incidents that had occurred between the actual family members, and in some cases, the issues brought up merely gave the family an opportunity to think creatively and work through a challenge together. Arad (2004) explained that the creative act of making up a story was something that children naturally take pleasure in and something that has the potential to capture their full attentions. She also explained that it gave them a way to communicate ideas and emotions that they did not yet have the ability to communicate or to understand at a young age.

On the other hand, Arad (2004) explained how the creative act of storytelling was a challenge for parents to try to reach a more honest and playful view that they had likely lost from their childhood. This may allow them to tap into issues and emotions that they may be blaming on someone or something else, or that they may be justifying in a more intellectual way and overlooking their natural emotional reaction. The challenge of reaching toward this type of creative storytelling also gave them the thought processes and the means of communication to both reach their children’s attention as well as relate to what their children had to say to them. This open field of creativity that was available to the family members allowed them to find many sides to each other, not just good or bad and allowed them to find some fault in each of them, not only Roy, who had been viewed as the “bad boy.”

The AASTT case study did not work with many art forms, though Arad (2004) briefly mentions that the family members were able to draw their characters. The sessions were strongly focused on the creation of a verbal story. The following example involves more art making as a base structure to the sessions along with verbal discussions.

Tree Theme Method

Gunnarsson, Jansson, and Eklund (2006) report on a case study where a technique called the Tree Theme Method is used. The premise of the Tree Theme Method (TTM) is that the client will create trees that symbolize certain periods of their life, including past, present, and future. In this case, the client made paintings of trees, one during each of the five sessions and then the therapist used the trees to help the client tell her story. The client entered therapy because of depression and anxiety. She felt overwhelmed and very anxious after someone close to her had died.

Gunnarsson et. al (2006) gathered information about the therapy sessions as well as feedback from the client and information on a follow up session which occurred three years later. The therapist began the first session by asking the client to paint a tree that represented her current life situation. The tree had limp branches with a few dying leaves on them and its roots were sticking out of the ground. The client said that this tree was a birch tree and the roots out of the ground were to show how very unstable and weak she currently felt. The therapist asked questions about the painting and guided the client to look critically at the drawing for specific characteristics. Judgments were not made by the therapist about the painting, that was left up to the client herself. This is because the idea of the TTM is to be used as a tool to guide the client into exploring her thoughts, feelings and emotions. The creation of the tree allows for a more concrete representation of a time period in her life, which helps her to frame certain parts of her life story as she tells it.

Gunnarsson et. al (2006) describe later sessions where the client is asked to create trees representing her childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and lastly her future. This gives a structure to her entire life story. Instead of only asking the client to try to tell her life story right away, where she would have to pick out more specific events or details, the client is first allowed the think creatively and have the freedom to work with what she naturally envisions to represent a certain part of her life.

Gunnarsson et. al (2006) explain how the client explored the many differences and changes between different parts of her past and present. When she approached her future, she was able to show changes that she wished to make in her life. She painted what she said was an oak tree, which was much stronger, and in her tree she also incorporated elements of the other trees of her life, which she had now acknowledged would be inevitable. She included dead leaves and weak branches in her strong oak tree because she was coming to an acceptance that there would still be difficult and sad times to come in her life, but that was all part of life.

Gunnarsson et. al (2006) gathered feedback from her three years later and asked her what she felt the benefits were to this practice, and if she thought it was beneficial. She claimed that it was extremely beneficial with the drawings giving her examples of turning points of different times in her life and how positive and negative things came out of each of them. She said that because the process was very oriented to giving her assignments for her everyday life to rework the way she reflects upon her life and the way she looks forward toward her future.

Gunnarsson et. al (2006) explain that when she was asked to create a future tree once again during this meeting three years later, she made one that was much stronger and more balanced between positive and negative and strengths and weaknesses. It was an oak tree and it also had an empty swing on it to represent the possibility of having grandchildren some day. She was shown her previous future tree as well as all of the others that she had created three years ago and she explained how she remembered them all differently over time, exaggerating some of the characteristics in her mind. This gave her another insight into the way she sees her life story differently from different viewpoints in the timeline of her life.

Personal Experience

I chose to explore this idea of incorporating storytelling into my creative process. Unlike the two previous examples, I used story telling primarily in one phase of my process and incorporated two other arts into my process besides the telling of the story. My process began with making a collage. Flipping through the magazine gave me the opportunity to take a more passive approach to brainstorming ideas. As someone who is very familiar with creating characters, symbols, and expressing herself, I feel that it is useful to give myself this more passive approach of exploring, where as some clients may more greatly benefit from creating imagery from their own mind and not be influenced by imagery in front of them.

I cut out images, which were potential props, settings, or characters, and placed them in an arrangement that felt appealing. I tried to refrain from initially putting too much thought into the storytelling idea and allowed myself to just take images that felt appealing or that I felt I could relate to somehow. I played around with arranging the images and decided against putting them in a time order. I found comfort in the ability to just have all of the ideas be mixed together with no time element, no before and after. Some images were grouped and some were placed farther to the outside because they felt more distant to me.

Once I was satisfied, I began to tell stories of each image. The stories all turned into a structure of a girl, who I acknowledged was me, approaching and interacting with each image. There was no timeline and the girl did not relate one image to the other, but would skip from one to the other and back to one and then to another explaining how she felt about each. I found a sense of relief of not needing to put more meaning or structure into it than that. I wished not to try to make connections or lessons out of the stories but only to have brief experiences. “The girl” was never described as more than that and I also found this relieving. After trying to define myself and relate to my past self very often lately, it was freeing, to just allow myself to be an undefined character in these little stories. I was about to take out some paper to record the stories but felt an aversion to making these little stories too concrete, so allowed myself to refrain.

The next thing I did was to reflect upon the characters I had created and my, or “the girl’s,” feelings toward each of them and I decided to work with my body and movement. I made poses and movements that I felt embodied some characters and expressed the feelings I had toward some of them. With one image I created movement which involved sounds and beats made with my hand to represent the events and the tension of that particular story. With another of the images, I simply held a pose strongly and proudly and let myself live in that feeling for a little while.

My experience was more of a storytelling technique that destructed my typical definitions of stories and gave me a freedom to actually be more creative and expressive. My decision to tell a story of “a girl” who approached and interacted with many different images and those elements inside them gave me a distancing from having to take responsibility for and to explain my own thoughts and feelings. In these stories it became more about the environments and other characters than the character of “the girl.” “The girl” had the freedom to feel and be whatever struck her and to move from one place to another with out anything holding her back. This is a way that I wish to experience my life more often because I feel that it will take some unneeded pressure off from myself and I think this experience was something that I could repeat as a sort of practicing of thinking in this way. Allowing myself to be open and creative let me experience more fully in the moment and I think if I continue to do exercises like this I will be able to also reframe the way I see and tell my own story.

Conclusions

These case studies have illustrated a variety of benefits of using storytelling techniques as a very relevant practice for clients. The creative process of creating or recounting a story allows the client many opportunities to practice creative viewing, thinking, and problem solving skills that can be translated into the client’s everyday life. As Gunnarsson et. al (2006) state, “In creative activities, the concepts of doing, being, and becoming are of interest” (p. 229). This means that within the creative process of storytelling, the client is able to create something, whether it be an artistic representation or a verbal story, and this is the doing. Then the client is able to reflect on the story and what it means or represents to his or her self and this is the being. Lastly, the discussion of the relation of the story to the client’s life and incorporating or discarding elements from that story into his or her view of the future and his or her future self is the element of becoming.

In the case of AASTT, each family member was able to create a story and tell it, and then they reflected upon the story by giving it a title and moral which then led to discussions about characters and events and conflicts, and then further into discussions about how these topics and issues related to the family’s everyday interactions. This process gave them a stepping off point where they finally opened up and also learned some important skills to use in their future interactions.

In the case of TTR, the client was able to create and to explore emotions and self concepts at key stages in her life by creating the tree paintings, then she was able to reflect upon them and tell parts of her life stories, and then eventually bring the discussion toward how she could harness certain qualities or change certain ways of thinking in her everyday life and in her future.

In my personal exploration, I was able to create and explore using the collage technique and then by telling stories about each image, I was able to reflect upon why I was drawn to each image and what it meant to me. In my movement process I was able to embody and sort of “try on” certain characteristics I wished for and those I may be longing for. For my personal process, I believe that writing my reflection for this paper was a further step in bringing my process closer to the becoming phase, and I will need more work to be more successful at moving forward with what I can learn from storytelling techniques.

As I had mentioned at the beginning of the paper, there are many, many more possibilities in working with the concept of storytelling and it is arguable that storytelling may exist in some form in every process or intervention that therapists present to their clients. With this said, the key importance to exploring and understanding the benefits and possibilities of storytelling is quite endless and quite accessible by any population. A knowledge of how any process may translate as a form of storytelling can give the therapist an extra edge in reaching his or her clients. Storytelling is easy to translate from the therapy setting to the personal world of the client because everyone is surrounded by stories and living their own story everyday, and any way that we can make this translation from therapy to “real life” is a valuable technique to learn.

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