MIND MOVES/Tony Bates: Stories and myths transmit from one generation to the next a collective understanding of who we are as a society and those ideals we count as central to our identity.
Tomorrow, St Patrick's Day, we celebrate a cultural myth that embodies survival, deep trust in personal intuition and the capacity to inspire people to embrace profound change.
It resonates with anyone who feels oppressed by a traumatic personal history that threatens to break their spirit or with anyone in a leadership position who is attempting to bring a new framework for change to the way their particular organisation or institution operates.
These cultural myths are intended to deepen our confidence in ourselves and carry the human spirit forward in contrast to those empty fantasies that hold it back.
We are not born into this world equipped with an understanding of what life is about. Through experience and reflection we build up a sense of meaning, a map for the journeys we undertake. As parents and educators, we are concerned with helping our children to find a meaning and purpose in their lives that engages the full resources of their imagination and creativity. In the long run we want to foster a confidence in our children that they can make a difference in some significant way to the world they will inhabit as adults.
It is worth giving some thought to the kind of stories we expose them to and the capacity of these stories to captivate and inspire their curiosity.
Consider the stories you read as a child that remain with you still and perhaps embody some particular message that is reflected in the manner in which you approach your current work and social life.
Maybe you identified with some warrior who left home and battled fiercely with daunting hardships before establishing his own kingdom complete with princess.
Or perhaps it was Cinderella whose hopes of a life beyond her struggles with abusive siblings were achieved against all the odds. Or maybe it was her two ugly sisters who resonated more with your experience of resentment at the good fortune of a more talented and loved sibling, who thrived whilst all your efforts seemed doomed.
In his book, The Uses of Enchantment (Penguin, 1976), Bruno Bettleheim writes about the irreplaceable importance of fairytales. They help children to make sense of the confusion and loneliness they experience and by navigating a path for them towards healthy relations with others.
If cultural myths serve to express the shared understanding that binds together a particular society, fairytales speak more personally to the unfolding emotional experience of the child.
They carry the message that hardship is unavoidable (many of these stories begin with the death of a parent, a kingdom on the brink of disaster, or simple folk visited by misfortune) and the hero may well have to struggle in isolation for a time, but that there are resources and aids to be found in most unexpected places, and that faith in oneself and openness to others is ultimately rewarded.
Personal feelings, urges and impulses are dramatised in the form of animals and characters with clearly drawn personalities.
Identification with the hero or heroine is encouraged not to promote some particular morality, but to communicate the negative outcomes of following a particular behavioural script based on fear, envy, avarice or betrayal of close friendship, and the potential rewards of courage and risk-taking.
The call to adventure may be accepted or denied, but the cost of holding to one's comfort zone is a life bereft of passion.
The hero's path is never portrayed as easy but it can lead to a life lived "happily ever after". Assurance that one can succeed, that independence is possible, is encoded in these tales and counters the felt sense of powerlessness that many children experience.
We are born unready and unprepared for what life holds in store for us. Stories and myths can take seriously the anxieties we face. A story myth like Lord of the Rings represents a modern myth that engages us with its brilliant cinematography and sense of adventure. But at a deeper level it speaks to a part of each of us that clings to anything in a destructive way to the detriment of our health. It may be a position of power, our status, a relationship or an addiction.
It presents Gollum in a deeply compassionate way as someone who falls prey to this obsessive clinging, and Frodo, a surprisingly ordinary hero who resists the seduction of power. Courage and loyalty to friends carry the story forward towards a restoration of the kingdom and freedom from dark shadows of the past.
Stories like this carry the message from generation to generation that conflicts are universal but that there is a dignity in confronting them and that success is always within our grasp.
Dr Tony Bates is principal clinical psychologist at St James's Hospital and course director of the MSc in Cognitive Psychotherapy at Trinity College Dublin.