ABSTRACT
Ancient myths and legends have a power to inspire, sustain and nurture us. The myth of Ariadne and the thread she gave to Theseus, so that he would be able to find his way back through the labyrinth after he had slain the Minotaur, is one such myth, and her thread is a powerful metaphor to describe the power of the therapeutic relationship. Imagine if you will a labyrinth containing the ‘beast’ of severe acquired brain injury. Imagine last remembering going out for a walk to the shops but now finding yourself in a world of terrifyingly strange noises and lights, unable to move, speak, eat or make any sense of who you are. Or imagine being told you are going into hospital for a routine operation to remove a swelling in your head causing you to have headaches and feel sick, but you awake paralysed. You are told your brain has been hurt, but what is a brain and who am I now if I have an injured brain? Although a child’s full sense of self is not developed until their late teens (Harter, 1999), and brain injury can result in a lack of insight about the injury (Catroppa et al., 2012; Cicerone et al., 2000), children and adolescents with brain injury still suffer a distressing dislocation of their sense of self.
