The Arts in Psychotherupy, Vol. 16 pp. 127-131. o Pergamon Press plc, 1989. Printed in the U.S.A. 0197-4556/89 $3.00 + .oO

STORYTELLING: A VALUABLE SUPPLEMENT TO POETRY WRITING WITH

THEELDERLY

SHELLEY M.

The elderly need stimulating group activities to help them form their identity in old age. Some activities therapists meet this need with storytell- ing performances and story writing (Williams, 1983). Worth (1984) described an effective method of map drawing for eliciting stories from the elderly, and Worsley (1984, p, 36) gathered stories from retired seamen, stories that “began to uncover long hidden memories.” Reminis- cence, the telling of memories, has been used as a means for communication and well-being. The work of Butler (Butler, 1963; Lewis & Butler, 1974) established the importance of life review and the increase of reminiscence in early old age. Kaminsky (1984) has shown the many uses of reminiscence. Parsons (1986) introduced it to groups to counter moderate depression among the elderly and Hughston and Merriam (1982) suggested that it improves cognition. Reminis- cence and life review also have been part of ef- forts to increase self-esteem (Priefer & Gambert, 1984).

Others use poetry writing as a means to per- sonal insight, expression, and healing (Koch, 1977, 1978). Poetry workshops for convalescents striv- ing to create healing poems have been led by Ratner (1984), and the efficacy and benefits of poetry therapy have been demonstrated by the work of Lemer (1978) and Hynes (1986). Murphy (1978, p. 65) emphasized poetry’s “capacity to ex- press and communicate multiple messages simul- taneously, thereby expanding human potential for expression and communication.” Morrison (1986) gives a concise history of poetry’s healing function.

GOTTERER, MA*

This paper, however, describes and explains how story and poetry in combination heighten the therapeutic benefits of each.

Group Composition and Goals

For three and a half years, groups of 10 to 12 women whose ages ranged from 60 to 90 years, met with a group leader in retirement homes. Their health for the most part was good. How- ever, most were not able to leave the home readily. Some of the women had extremely poor sight and the leader helped them by writing for them. The groups met once a week for sequences of 10 weeks, with two or three sequences within a calendar year. Each session was approximately 90 minutes long and each of the lo-week cycles was organized around a theme such as harvest, winter wandering, or the garden.

The overall goal of the sessions was to give the elderly women a consistent opportunity to com- municate their ideas and feelings by talking, lis- tening, and writing. Morton Lieberman and Sheldon Tobin, working at the University of Chicago, have written that “too much attention is paid to the physical environment in the institu- tions, and not enough to the psychological needs of their inhabitants” (in Wacker, 1986, p. 1). The hope of the group leader was to offer and em- phasize prevention rather than to wait for pa- thology to demand attention.

More specific goals for the group were to pro- mote well-being by combatting loneliness and the sense of worthlessness experienced by the el-

*Shelley Gotterer is a storyteller and leader of story and poetry writing groups.

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128 SHELLEY M. GOTTERER

derly in institutions no matter how physically at- tractive and adequate the institution may be. An additional goal was to entertain the imagination, to give it full play.

Setting

The group leader, a storyteller and teacher with wide exposure to stories and poetry, was able to select material from diverse sources. She fashioned a therapeutic environment, one that would “match abilities while also giv[ing] appro- priate challenges, thereby promoting growth in the person’s mental and emotional competence” (Mehrotra, Randolph & Dietrich, 1984, p. 47). There was an effort to change behavior - from silence to conversation, from sitting alone to sit- ting with a group, from passive gazing to discus- sing poems. The elderly not only listened to poetry but also wrote poetry as part of the group proc- ess. “Composing poetry is one of the most useful kinds of activities because it fosters mental stimulation as well as interaction among elders, affirming that what they have inside them is worthwhile” (Karr, 1985).

Frequently, however, people feel uneasy with poetry. Unfamiliar and intimidating, poetry is considered by many as the province of a few. They do not trust their own interpretive re- sponses. Many are simply not accustomed to poetry and do not see themselves reading and discussing poems; their concern is that they are not sufficiently knowledgeable to do so. The leader’s view was that the women needed a way to reduce this stress and prepare to encounter their own imaginations. Story proved effective in both objectives.

Although both story and poetry are evocative, story builds primarily on the narration of an event; poetry builds on the power of images. Obviously, the two are not antithetical and do overlap. However, the leader found that the nar- rative quality of story prepared the group for the intensity of poetic images.

Story Selection

The stories the leader chose were readily ac- cessible and helped the group relax, feel more confident, and risk talking about poems. The in- terests and concerns of the group were a guide in selecting stories such as Clarkson and Cross

(1980), Dorson (1973, and Shah (1979), or from an authentic version of Grimm’s fairytales. Not all the stories were old, and the leader used good contemporary writers and editors, such as Lester (1972) or Lobe1 (1980). She began, especially at the start of a sequence, with stories of the trick- ster, of the weak overcoming tyrants, or of dreams fultilled. Fd~1r.s by Lobe1 (1980), Brer Rabbit tales, and legends were helpful sources.

Responses flowed readily; there was laughter and pleasure. An opening story might elicit a sudden reaction and stimulate group members to talk and communicate thoughts. Discussion might go on for some time; or there might be little response, just smiles and nods. The impact of the story might not emerge until late in the session or late in the course. However, the energy of the group changed visibly. Each lone woman was brought together with the others and the group was ready to listen to poetry. Resistance de- creased: participation increased.

After an extended period of imaging, sharing, and deepening feelings and reminiscences with poems, the leader ended the session with a sub- stantial story, one of symbolism and power. Two particularly effective ending stories were “Sir Gawain and the Loathly Lady,” re-told by Selina Hastings (1985) and “The Mountain Where Old People Were Abandoned,” a Japanese folktale (Dorson, 1975). After discussing poetry, the group was receptive to the more demanding metaphors and meanings of the final story. The purpose here was to knit together the day’s ses- sion for the group and to reach a sense of satisfy- ing closure.

This order might be reversed. If a previous session had been especially moving or had been significant to the group, or if it were near the end of the 10 weeks and the group members knew one another well, the leader started with a story that in a strong way recalled or presented issues from the previous session. Then the group could expand its exploration of the issues or alterna- tively move on to new ones.

Function of Story

Story served four functions in fostering the groups’ goals.

1. Cl~nnacs titnc NHU place. The first function of story in preparing for the experience of the

STORYTELLING: POETRY WRITING WITH ELDERLY 129

poetry was to change time and place. The initiat- ing story helped the group make a transition from its members’ daily routine of sounds, sights, and activities and from expected images in their rooms and halls to the unexpected play of their own imaginations. The women settled quietly as they listened. Some closed their eyes to focus more fully but, for the most part, eye contact was constant. Expressions on faces changed with the events of the story. The morning of communal breakfast and television and difficult walking had ended, and the time of the performance asserted itself as the leader told stories from various tra- ditions: Native American stories, Hasidic tales, Chinese folklore, or Richard Chase (1943) tales. Performance time might be hundreds of years ago in legend or in a mythic time of ancestors or animals. Place changed as well, as each woman encountered her own flow of images. The chairs and the room were transformed. In imagination, the group could be in a green forest, dancing on the desert, or beneath the sea. One woman de- scribed this value of story to a visitor by saying, “I feel as if I have been a long way away.” An- other woman declared, “I forget my pain,” and a third laughed, saying, “We want the magic.”

The initiating story stimulated more active imaging and did so without admonition or overt instruction. The purpose in telling the story was to benefit from the close personal relationship storytelling fosters. The story and its images were available without comment or judgment from the teller, thus furthering the group leader’s goal to entertain the imagination. The women’s inner worlds were evoked, with personal motifs from the story of their lives. One woman, for example, returned several times to the image of a grandmother’s sheltering cloak. This encounter with important personal images was deepened by the subsequent poetry.

2. Provides unity off&-m. Story functioned to support poetry by giving the group an experience of the unity of form. It introduced the group to a narrative with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Within this unity, there was conflict and resolu- tion. “Every story requires some sense of con- flict and situational circumstances that lead to and form solution” (Williams, 1983, p. 64). Crisis and solution portrayed in story were a reminder or reflection of the reality of their own conflicts and were an encouragement to envision resolu-

tion. The stories and poems had varying types of closure-statements, questions, abrupt depar- tures-reflecting the variety of their own human experience. The women felt the fundamental movement of story from beginning to middle to end, and then experienced the movement in more economical and intense form in the poems.

3. Story stimulated strong rmotions. The group talked energetically about their feelings. This process further functioned to enhance the benefits of poetry, which then served as a catalyst to bring out deep inner feelings-fear of loss, dismay, frustration, or pleasure. The func- tions of story had brought the group to a fuller realization of the poetry. If life is a story, then a moment in that story is a poem. The group was prepared to encounter the moment of poetry, a moment beyond the mundane and expected. The poems helped the women acknowledge and write about feelings in an institutional environment that provided little or no other means to do so. For example, people in an institution feel a great loss of freedom and power. The women de- scribed themselves as ants or prisoners. “De- partmental” by Robert Frost (1958, p. 188), a poem about ants burying their dead, brought out a strong response of sudden recognition.

The strong feelings evoked by the stories and poetry were given form and structure by the poems the group wrote. For most of the people in the group, writing poems was a new activity. The members talked happily about their creativity and often shared their writing with friends and family.

New tasks in old age are essential to well- being (Corbett, 1984). Increasingly, the women had found they were physically unable to do ac- tivities that had been routine. Going to work, cooking, typing or knitting, even reading may have diminished or vanished as options. They were pleased that telling and writing brought out latent talents and interests; women who never had had time to write about color, create a haiku, or describe the snows in northern Michigan did so at length. On the other hand, a person who had always been active in writing found support in a group with similar interests.

4. Encouragrs communication. In addition to their supportive role with poetry, stories inde- pendently supported the overall goal of generat- ing communication. Stories quickly moved the

130 SHELLEY M. GOTTERER

elderly to talking with one another as they com- mented on the story, re-told the story to others later, or responded with their own personal stories.

Such conversation is a basic need of the el- derly (Loader, 1981). One member of the group pointed out that the residents could listen to the ideas of other people almost any time in book reviews, travelogues, demonstrations, even per- formances; seldom, she emphasized, were the residents able comfortably to express their own personal feelings, explore strong ones, and move beyond platitudes. Other comments followed: “We need to be fed,” and “We need something to bubble up and break the surface.”

The women already had been telling stories to some extent in their everyday life. Whenever they shared memories, or gossiped, or re-told the events of a visit from last week or long ago, they were telling stories. The group, however, provided a time, a place, and an audience for the stories about their more intimate selves-their growing up, their work, their loves, their fami- lies. This audience listened actively by asking questions, laughing, challenging each other or re- sponding with more reminiscences. Stories were re-told because they contained potent images and experiences that needed to be recalled; they helped focus the ongoing process of reminis- cence. In the stories were fears, hopes, tricks, passions, and pleasure. A woman explained the legacy of the marriage between her baron grand- father and gypsy grandmother. Another woman reflected on the significance of a fragile fan, the first of her girlhood. Yet another member re- counted the pride and excitement of seeing her heroines, Colonel Oveta Culp Hobby of the Women’s Army Corps standing with Eleanor Roosevelt. By starting with a story, the group leader showed that talk and feelings were impor- tant, acknowledged, and welcome.

The groups were highly successful in introduc- ing new and fulfilling behaviors to the group mem- bers. The combination of telling stories, hearing poems, and writing poetry stimulated a creative process of significant benefit, nurturing their self-worth. By sharing and responding to memories and personal stories that grew out of the sessions, the leader affirmed that what these elderly had seen, experienced, and come to understand over the years was valuable. Often

she commented to one in the group, “I never knew that,” or “Please explain,” or “Tell us more,” or “You have so much to teach me.” This process also helped build community within the group. The women increased their ability to listen more closely to other people, “Hearing others talk about their experiences helps me battle with old age.” New friendships were formed. One resident remarked, “I saw her in the hall, but we never really got to know one another until we talked in the group.” Women wrote their families about their writing and en- closed poems. A friend transcribed one woman’s poem using calligraphy, and framed the attrac- tive result for her. Some wrote memories of fam- ily celebrations from long ago and sent them to grandchildren. As the sessions progressed there was more and more laughter and sharing. Writing poetry clearly was enjoyed. Eventually the group leader did not need to bring a formal poem for the group to discuss because the members were writ- ing and sharing enough of their own work to fill the session.

Summary

The hearing and writing of poems, which was the primary activity of the group, was heightened by storytelling. The preparation and support given by story were important in attaining the goals the leader had for using poetry with the elderly-imaginative play, well-being, and com- munication. The interplay between story and poetry was well-suited to meeting their needs for mental stimulation, expression, and creative op- portunity.

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