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Healing Through Myth and Imagination
An Interview with Hendrika DeVries, MFT
by Ann Todhunter Brode

I had lunch with Hendrika DeVries today and we had a stimulating conversation about her work, our professional dedication and world affairs. For over twenty years Hendrika has lived and worked in Santa Barbara. Over this time, she has introduced many of us to the power of myth and dream and symbol. In her private practice, Hendrika follows the threads of story and dream and personal mythology to unravel the complexities of the psyche. As a professor in both the Mythological Studies and Counseling Psychology Programs, she has delighted her students at Pacifica Graduate Institute with her deep wisdom and understanding.

When I asked Hendrika where her own deep love interest was, she said it has always been in the study of mythology. And this is because "mythic thinking can embrace polarities. Our personal and collective history is full of various polarities that present themselves as conflict and dilemmas. Our rational mind want s things to be "either/or" and has a hard time with things that are "both /and". Inviting the symbolic aspects of a situation, we can bridge the polarities and reach solutions and places otherwise unattainable. Hendrika uses this approach because it is simply practical; that is, it gets results. She laughs, "People have called me a ‘pragmatic mystic’!" The beauty of the image-laden language of myth and archetype is that it quickly takes someone out of the Victim and moves them into a place of Destiny. And this is very empowering.

I asked DeVries for an example of how this might work in a therapeutic setting and she described the following exercise that she sometimes uses in presentations:

Think of a conflict in your life. Write about this conflict factually. Describe all of the key players and situational dynamics. See where you stand in relationship to this conflict.

.Write the story out again using all of the players in the context of a fairy tale. Place the situation in some imaginary place...like "a land far away" or "a kingdom deep in the forest". Not cast the characters for your tale in keeping with the new backdrop. For instance: a stern uncle might become a threatening bear in the woods or an essential mentor might become a talking tree. Evoking the attributes of your fairy tale characters, and staying in an imaginary frame of mind, re-write the conflict allowing something new to emerge.

Now look at your conflict again. Does the fairy tale give you a different view and new insight? Does an obvious solution emerge?

I asked Hendrika, "Where would a new client begin when working with you?" She answered that client who come to her, obviously, do not at the beginning! Because of her reputation, people who seek her help are already interested in the symbolic nature of things and are seeking to work "more imaginally". She also said that couples can really benefit from her approach. It was easy for me to see where this work would be very dynamic in couples’ therapy. In such work, bridging two separate realities is essential to circumvent the occasional impasse of individual egos. Whether working with individuals or couples, whatever the client brings to each therapy session is an obvious point of departure, In early sessions, Hendrika and her clients will work with the richness of images as they appear in dreams and an emerging "personal mythology".

When I asked DeVries to speak more about personal mythology and what this means. She said that the story we have about ourselves (as we tell our personal history and grapple with present day issues) always describes a particular, very personal mythology or combination of mythologies. For instance, a person could have their personal myth embodied in the tale of the little match girl. This person always feels as if she is on the outside looking in. Or their story could align with the classic Cinderella looking for a Prince Charming. Hendrika told me of the breakthrough insight a client had when she discovered a similarity between her story and the story of the mythological Casandra. Both women were forever telling people things and never being heard. The importance of revealing our personal mythology is that it can offer us new choices. Make no mistake, even though our personal mythologies are often unconscious, they can have a significant effect on how we think about things and the choices we make.

Hendrika said she really resonates with the ideas. Jungian psychologist and author of "Re-visioning Psychology" and "The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling". She likes his work because it allows room for images to have a certain autonomy. When we consider that there are many gods and goddesses in our psyche and many stories that want to step forth, not just one, it demands that the ego let go for a bit and for something new to happen. Think how frustrating it could be to keep cycling through the same mythology over and over again. Hendrika proposed that even when we realize that we live not only in our own story but in the stories of other people, an opportunity has been created for a shift of consciousness!

As people continue therapy with Hendrika, their stories create a mythology and this mythology can take them deeper into their story. And beyond our individual story, a common story can be found. This common story is a place where we discover that we are interconnected and no longer alone. Touching this place of the common story, inevitably, led to a conversation about our collective story as it plays out through surrent events and cultural attitudes. Hendrika proposed that "individual hurting, in the bigger, collective picture, takes a waking up to the suffering of many in our midst in order to make the changes we need to make." So, we ended our conversation talking about current events.

No matter when we are living, when we encounter conflict or impasse, we could ask, "What needs to happen here?" If the world at large is the therapeutic container, we need to be aware that when we have something in our imagination is going to manifest. It is hard to change a deeply held cultural myths (I am sure you can think of one). Hendrika suggests that one way to engage the problem is to bring archetypes and story and symbol into the discussion. There are mythic symbols all around us...sometimes a train wreck is "a Train Wreck".....sometimes the Hero has a Shadow...sometimes we need to invite the Thirteenth Fairy, or impossible guest, into the discussion and let it have a voice. As .............said, "We have to take it beyond the therapy room and into the world."