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Here's a little game you can play by yourself or with a counseling or coaching client. It can be quite revealing, as it was in the example below.
Here's how it works. A question in my new-client questionnaire is, "If you'd write a book, what would it be about?" Then, if appropriate, during a session, I might say, "Let's create a story now based on that book idea: I'll say the first few lines, then you continue, then I continue, and we'll see what clues about you emerge. Okay?"
Here's the transcript of such a story a client and I created yesterday during her first session with me. I call myself M and the client C.
M: So, in your questionnaire, you wrote that your book would be about a woman on a plane who accidentally took a hallucinogen, and that somehow enabled her to change the world. So, our story starts with you taking a nap during a long flight and the woman next to you puts that hallucinogen into your drink. When you wake up, you drink it, have a good trip and...
C: I'd go to the back of the plane have a weird pow-wow with the stewardesses. And the drug would rip all the shyness out of me. I tell them that mothers are not venerated.
M: And a stewardess said, "I can't believe you came back here to help me. I don't feel venerated. And...
C: And I told them about a woman who built a mansion on fracking land and fire came out of her Jacuzzi because of the fracking and burned down the mansion. We combine our anger about motherhood with our anger about the environment .
M: So the three of you decide to take on some environmental cause, your symbol will be three torches, and you decide that the issue you want to address is...
C: Fracking. We'd do it underground, a woman's way. We're going to seduce the frackers in power and drug them. We'd chain them in one of our houses.
M: What are you going to do next?
C: Reeducate them but if that doesn't work, threaten them. They vote the right way or we tell them "We'll be back." And now the women are in power instead of men.
M: And then what?
C: If they're good, they get a reward---like a room full of prostitutes.
M: So, were there any clues in that fantasy that have implications for your real life?
C: I like the idea of being able to do what I want. To have power. And you can make it up as you go along. And no one is taking care of anyone. I'd be in charge of myself.
This variant on drama therapy and play therapy can reveal important issues even in a first session that might otherwise remain submerged for a long time.
Marty Nemko's bio is in Wikipedia.
