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)

She asked her mother, “Mum, mum, mum, what is real, real, real?”

“What do you mean, what is real, real, real?” “I mean without this echo, echo, echo.” “Which echo, echo, echo?

Right here and now is real, real, real.” “I see, see, see.”

And then she understood, understood, understood.

The story “The Cave Dwellers” demonstrates that what we perceive is determined more by our biology and biography than by objective facts, and that the feedback effects from both our sensory perceptions and our interpretations largely drown out what is allegedly real about the world.

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

Mohammed created a world. Freud created a world. Tolkien created a world. McKinsey created a world. The Aldi brothers created a world. Bill Gates created a world. Can I too create a world?

The German company Tchibo uses the advertising slogan, “Every week a new world”. New worlds are indeed created every week. Most of them are not very original; they swim in the wake of the established worlds and do not gain any traction.

What kind of a world have you created? A philosophical world? A spiritual world? A commercial world? A mathematical world? A social world? An aesthetic world? A material world? A communicative world? A world of fun? An ethical world?

You might be thinking to yourself, “But I haven’t created any world at all!” I don’t believe that for a second. As soon as you look at something – anything – and inadvertently think something new, you start to create a world.

“The Creation of the World” makes it clear that all thought systems – and therefore all human ways of interpreting the world – have been devised by humans. We often get the world we think up and believe in; at a personal level, this means that we become what we believe in and what we think, hope and fear.

This rule has far-reaching implications in terms of both our health and our psychological, material, financial and social conditions. We can of course share our individual worlds with others by communicating them verbally and non-verbally, and to a certain extent turn our environment into what we believe it to be. All reality is created on the basis of a communicated and therefore shared world.

.(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 visited the Pisa Baptistry close to the city’s cathedral, I thought to myself, ‘They’ve turned it into a temple to commerce!’ It raised my hackles to pay to enter a church and then find myself surrounded by hundreds of frantic tourists rushing around and taking photographs of everything. Many kept checking their watches, because a singer was paid to perform every hour in order to demonstrate the building’s wonderful acoustics. Should a church not be a place of prayer and devotion? After climbing up to the gallery, I thought, ‘Surely no one will object if I turn this temple to Mammon back into a house of God.’ It took me a while to screw up the courage, but finally I sang the opening line of a psalm loudly and clearly into the open space, ‘Laudate omnes gentes, laudate dominum.’ The acoustics really were superb.

Everything went quiet in the church, and although everyone looked around to find out who was singing, the echoes made it difficult for them to locate me. The security staff searching frantically for the perpetrator also found had a hard task on their hands, but by the end of the verse one had spotted me. He waited for me to start singing again in order to catch me red-handed, since it would otherwise have been easy for me to deny my act of sacrilege. I looked around the building in a daze. “Thank you,” said a woman standing next to me. “That was wonderful.” I too felt better after having sung the psalm. When the last echo had faded away, I left the house of God, giving a sly grin to the security guard who was still watching me.

The story “Sacrilege” illustrates that standing up for your values represents a value in itself. In cases where these values are opposed to the interests of others, it is often necessary to find a balance between defending your ideals in public and taking a less conspicuous approach. The story can also be used to encourage clients not to hide their light under a bushel and to present a self-confident image during interactions with others.

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

A number of researchers wanted to find out why salmon die after spawning, so they fished a number of specimens out of the river, fitted them with radio transmitters and placed them back into the sea. And what do you think happened? The animals stayed alive.

The story “Renewed Life” makes it clear that life plans and goals play a vital role in an individual’s happiness, health and life expectancy.

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