ABSTRACT
Therapeutic storytelling and aesthetic storytelling are two different arts, each of which can only be learned with practice; what is artistically valuable is not always therapeutically valuable. A therapeutic effect can often be achieved if we simply tell these everyday stories as we would tell them when sitting around the kitchen table or chatting with friends, with the only difference being that we should remain silent after the climactic turning point in order to give the listener time to think. There are three factors that turn an everyday story into a therapeutically effective story. What the resulting story loses in its differentiation of reality, it will gain in aesthetic and therapeutic effect. Any relativising or specifying statements which are genuinely indispensable should be presented in a subsequent sentence instead of a subordinate clause. A therapist wishing to intensify the therapeutic effect of a story can use trance-inducing words and sentence structures, trance-inducing non-verbal elements and implicit trance suggestions.
