An unemotional technician and a romantically inclined office worker came for relationship counselling with the hope that I could help them understand each other better. I explained that people – and in particular men and women – are never able to understand each other. “I understand,” said the technician. “We need a converter which transforms my language into my wife’s language.” “That’s a very clear way of putting it,” I replied, and then asked, “What’s a converter?”

“The Converter” demonstrates how everyone speaks his or her own language and must learn to speak in the language of his or her counterpart, using the examples of men and women and different professions.

(From: Stefan Hammel: Handbook of Therapeutic Storytelling. Sories and Metaphors in Psychotherapy, Child and Family Therapy, Medical Treatment, Coaching and Supervision, Routledge 2019)

A group of women from the Farmers’ Wives Club of Little Middlington were going on a trip to the theatre when the coach in which they were travelling broke down, and the play was in full swing by the time they arrived. As the group entered the theatre, one of the actors on stage was declaiming, “Who are you? Why do you come so late?” One of the women answered, “We’re from Little Middlington and our coach conked out!”

The story “Theatre Trip” demonstrates how other people’s words can often be misinterpreted as a result of a guilty conscience or critical inner voices.

(From: Stefan Hammel: Handbook of Therapeutic Storytelling. Sories and Metaphors in Psychotherapy, Child and Family Therapy, Medical Treatment, Coaching and Supervision, Routledge 2019)

There was once a priest who lived in a small village far out in the countryside in Bavaria. He was a young and good-looking priest who lived alone, which made him a figure of enormous interest for the other villagers. One morning he got up, opened his window, hung out two sets of bedlinen to air – as was the custom in that land – and drank his coffee in peace. Good morning everyone! Now he had plenty of material for his next sermon…

The story “Good Morning Everyone!” can be used to encourage the listener to adopt a creative approach to gossip. It demonstrates how a victim of gossip can take proactive steps against the “rumour mill” by spreading counterrumours.

(From: Stefan Hammel: Handbook of Therapeutic Storytelling. Sories and Metaphors in Psychotherapy, Child and Family Therapy, Medical Treatment, Coaching and Supervision, Routledge 2019)

While I was driving home I approached a zebra crossing. A pedestrian was walking along the pavement, still a little way before the crossing. I stopped. It is possible to tell whether someone is going to cross the road several metres before they stop or look around, because they make a small turning motion with their body or head which foreshadows the planned movement.

There are situations in which it can be useful to observe these minimal movements which anticipate actual movements. When the person leading a committee meeting or seminar asks for a volunteer, for example, a long pause often sets in while everyone waits to see if someone else is enthusiastic enough to volunteer first. And yet the individual who finally volunteers after lots of encouragement is always the one who moved immediately after the request was made – by leaning forwards slightly, by opening his or her mouth briefly, by uncrossing his or her legs, by sighing or by any other movement which might serve as a non-verbal introduction to a spoken contribution. If I want to circumvent this tedious process, I address a direct question to the person who moved first after I asked for a volunteer, enquiring whether he or she would like to take on the task. Experience shows that the answer is always yes.

The story “Without Words” offers examples of how body language can be interpreted. It can be used as therapeutic homework to provide young people with autism with a new way of interpreting other people’s behaviour, and to occupy highly gifted young people with observation tasks as a distraction from provocative or depressive behaviour.

(From: Stefan Hammel: Handbook of Therapeutic Storytelling. Sories and Metaphors in Psychotherapy, Child and Family Therapy, Medical Treatment, Coaching and Supervision, Routledge 2019)

Yesterday I went to buy something at a shop in town. The shop assistant was on her own, and she had run out of change. Although we had chatted for a few minutes before I paid, we did not know each other. And yet she placed a 50-euro note in my hand and said, “Could you please change this for me in the electrical shop next door?” I asked myself whether the woman was irresponsible, careless and naïve for sending a man whom she had never met before out of her shop with 50 euros from her till, or whether she was a good judge of character and trusting, or whether she was warm-hearted and unconventional. I could have left the shop with the money and never returned. Instead, I gave the shop assistant my wallet and said, “Hold onto this until I return.” My wallet contained 200 euros, my identity card, my driving licence and my credit card.

What does that make me? One hundred different people reading this study will think that it proves that I am one hundred different people with one hundred or more different characteristics, and yet their judgments have nothing whatsoever to do with me.

The story “What Does That Make Me?” encourages listeners to think about the non-absolute nature of the characteristics an individual is assumed to have. It can also be used to illustrate the extent to which purported characteristics depend on how the surrounding context is interpreted. It is impossible to draw any conclusions about a person’s real nature from his or her behaviour, even if this behaviour is repeated, firstly because this would preclude the possibility of the person acting differently on a regular basis (otherwise he or she would have different characteristics, i.e. be a completely different person, as soon as his or her behaviour changed), and secondly because the characteristics which are ascribed – frugality or stinginess, a scheming mind or an enterprising spirit, heroism or stupidity, stubbornness or strong-mindedness – depend on the observer’s own values and criteria.

(From: Stefan Hammel: Handbook of Therapeutic Storytelling. Sories and Metaphors in Psychotherapy, Child and Family Therapy, Medical Treatment, Coaching and Supervision, Routledge 2019)

When I was a small child, I had a colouring book with pictures made up entirely of unconnected little dots. Each dot had a number next to it, and if you joined the dots in the correct order you would discover the picture that was hiding behind them.

I wonder how many pictures might be discovered in these collections of dots if the numbers next to them somehow got lost. If someone had never seen a map of the stars before, which stars would he or she join together to invent signs of the zodiac? How many different night skies could there be? Which world might we be living in if we had been raised by someone else and given different explanations of how the world works?

How many different interrelations or disjunctions might we find between the things which exist in this world? How many terms might we invent for things which are intangible, like peace, justice and identity? In how many ways might we link the frameworks of our values or allow them to co-exist separately? In how many ways might we see a person, and in how many ways might we interpret his or her behaviour? That’s why I keep on joining the dots.

The story “Dot to Dot” makes it clear that we construct our own reality, and that different constructions of reality are both possible and admissible. It can be used to encourage clients to be more tolerant, to question their former points of view and to examine new points of view. It also makes it clear that the way in which children see the world and the delusional beliefs of dementia patients (for example) stem from missing information and the use of imagination and emotion to fill the associated gaps.

(From: Stefan Hammel: Handbook of Therapeutic Storytelling. Sories and Metaphors in Psychotherapy, Child and Family Therapy, Medical Treatment, Coaching and Supervision, Routledge 2019)

Once I dreamt that the left arm of my glasses was crooked, and I wanted to fix it so that the glasses would fit again. I bent it backwards and forwards twice, and then it snapped off. I held it up to the glasses – it had broken off at the hinge, and could no longer be repaired. What should I do?

I put the glasses on in the hope that they might fit somehow, but they hung diagonally across my face. Everything looked distorted through the lenses, and holding them in place the whole time was extremely uncomfortable. Yet opticians are closed on Sundays. What is the best course of action in a situation like this? I thought for a while. Then I remembered – I’d undergone laser surgery over six months ago to correct my short-sightedness. Why on earth was I still wearing the stupid glasses? And I went about my day without them.

“Glasses” is the transcript of a dream. The aim of the story is to make it clear that we often waste time and energy on maintaining counterproductive ways of seeing and experiencing life. Solutions which involve changing the underlying foundations of our way of thinking may be too close for us to see them.

(From: Stefan Hammel: Handbook of Therapeutic Storytelling. Sories and Metaphors in Psychotherapy, Child and Family Therapy, Medical Treatment, Coaching and Supervision, Routledge 2019)