Fabulatherapy, Take Two

A friend on Facebook just posted a link to an article and little Youtube clip: "Movie-and-Talk: Can This Simple Exercise Help Save a Marriage?" In a word? Yes.

Researchers at the University of Rochester put married couples into different therapy groups. Two of the groups received more intensive, skills-based therapy (two different kinds), in one group the couples just watched relationship movies with each other and afterwards talked about them, and the control group did nothing. The study was carried out over three years, at the end of which the researchers found that the "do nothing" group had twice the divorce rate of the other three groups. But the exciting thing about this study is this: just watching movies together and talking about them was just as effective in keeping couples together as intensive, costly marriage counselling.

You see, it's yet another instance of Fabulatherapy, that word I coined  a year ago to describe how Story can help us deal with our lives. In that instance, it was dealing with bibliotherapy, reading books to help you cope with depression. Maybe this form of marriage therapy should be called cinematotherapy? Regardless, it's engaging with stories that makes the difference - Fabulatherapy.

The researcher who talks about this study on that Youtube clip speculates that it's not the movie-watching itself which makes the difference in couples' lives, but the talking about it afterwards. I beg to differ (somewhat). Watching a movie means to immerse oneself in the story. For the hour or two that you're watching, you ARE the person on screen, you experience what they experience, and you learn from it. In watching it with someone else, and talking about it afterwards, you synchronise your experience, and the learning that comes from it. Yes, the talking is important, but I think it's the movie itself that makes the greatest impact.

This is a beautiful example of the Power of Story (and one that's verified with fancy terminology, statistics, N=174, and a write-up in APA's PsycNET, no less). Fiction has incredible power over our lives. From personal experience, I can tell you that one of the biggest factors in the success of a marriage is to have witnessed the functional marriage of one's parents. When you have seen a marriage work, when you have experienced a couple who argues, does not always agree with each other, has weird quirks and irritating habits, and still stays together, reconciles after the arguments, and above and in spite of all deeply loves one another, you have an invaluable toolbox for making your own marriage work. (For the most part, on average. It's not an unfailing guarantee, of course, but it means you're quite far ahead of the game.) It's having experienced it, having seen it - that's what counts.

In daily life, we don't see how marriages work at home - I'm sure I'm not the only one who has been caught by complete surprise at the divorce of couples who, by all outer appearances, seemed to be doing perfectly well. We don't show our squabbles in public. So you have to be on the inside, so to speak, have to watch a couple in their home, in order to see how marriage really works. And the beauty of Story, of fiction, is that it allows us to go on the inside like that without having to intrude on our friends' privacy ("Hey, Joe and Martha, you seem to have a good marriage going. Do you mind if I park myself in your living room for the next month and listen to you when you're fighting, so I can learn how it's done? I promise to shut my eyes when you get too lovey-dovey." Uh, no. I don't think so.). We can watch a relationship, we can learn from others' mistakes and what they did right, just by popping a movie into the DVD player (or finding it on Netflix, more like) - just by engaging with a story. And that story, even if it is entirely fictional, can help us on our own lives, can teach us what we need to learn to make things work for ourselves.

Now I want to watch that movie with Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney that they showed a clip of in that Youtube video. And there was one with Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy that looked interesting, too. Or maybe I'll just go to my own DVD shelves - there is Shrek 2, all about making a new marriage work and making compromises for each other, or My Big Fat Greek Wedding, about making a relationship work in the midst of a great big extended family, or...

Life, the Universe, and Movies for Marriage. Fabulatherapy at its finest.

Fabulatherapy

A couple of days ago, one of my friends posted this link on Facebook: "You don't need pills for depression - you need books, says British agency". To save you the hassle of reading the article, it says - well, it says just what's in the title. Apparently this organization in the UK called "The Reading Agency" is working on getting books prescribed to patients with depression; and what's really cool about it is that they have the backing of the Department of Health and a few other high-up official bodies with clout. They've compiled a list of "mood-boosting" books, and it will be made into a pamphlet and handed out by doctors to their depressed patients. Whoot! I wish I lived in the UK - bibliotherapy, that's my kind of antidepressant prescription.

Now, of course, I've been self-medicating with bibliotherapy all my life. Okay, all my life since I was six and first picked up Der kleine Lord (aka Little Lord Fauntleroy), and puzzled out the first line, "Cedric himself knew nothing whatever about it". I haven't looked back since. But, really, even before that epic moment, I lived in stories. Stories that were read to me, stories that were told to me. (None that I watched, at that point, because we didn't have a TV, let alone go to the movies - we were kind of old-fashioned that way.) In fact, quite likely the reason I picked up Little Lord Fauntleroy and taught myself to read was that there were never enough people around who were willing to read to me, so I had to become self-sufficient (on the same principle, I got my driver's license as soon as I possibly could, because I was tired of being dependent on other people to drive me around).

In case you missed my point, I love books. I adore books. I - well, no, I wouldn't go so far as to say I worship books. One does not worship the air one breathes, or the food one lives on. Truly, I don't think I could live without books. Then again - it's not actually the books I love. Yes, I do love the physical objects, too - I enjoy handling them, fixing them, sorting them, looking at them nicely arranged on the shelves; I could be quite happy working in a book bindery or the processing department of a library (where they put the call number stickers on the spine, and the clear sticky foil around the dust covers). But what I really love is what's in books. I love Story; I live in Story.

And Story comes in many forms. Books are just one of them. See, I'm fully aware that book nerds like myself aren't actually terribly common. Oh, there's plenty of us, alright - you should see the crowds I have to elbow my way through to get to the book tables at the annual library discard sale. But compared to the crowds at, say, a ballgame, or the opening of the latest blockbuster movie, well...

But that's just it: the latest blockbuster movie. Movies are Story. TV shows are Story. Most computer games are Story. Even ballgames, or the Olympics, are Story - "...and Schlipfengrimmler passed the ball to Schustermeier, and he hit the most amazing strike of his career, and - GOOOAAAL!!" It gets told, and re-told, over and over. Blockbuster movies are blockbusters because so many people love them. In fact, I don't know anyone, not one single person, who does not like Story in one form or another.

Now, much as I love and thoroughly, wholeheartedly, approve of the bibliotherapy the Brits are prescribing to their depressed patients, I would love even more to see that idea expanded. Not everyone loves reading, and (though this might sound sacrilegious to my fellow book nerds, librarians and literacy teachers) I don't think everyone needs to, either. But I think much, much more could be done with Story. Everyone needs Story. I believe everyone enjoys Story, so everyone could benefit from Story.

I'm not sure what to call it - Storyotherapy? Narratotherapy? Oh, I know - the Latin word for story is fabula. Fabulatherapy. Fabulous!

Now wouldn't it be great if, next time you go to the doctor because you're feeling lousy, the doc would pull out his prescription pad, and started asking: "Now, what's your favourite form of stories? You like movies? Hmm, let's see, where is my list of the most uplifting, serotonin-boosting films of all times? Ah, here we are. Take two, and call me in the morning!" I'm sure that studies would prove that there are zero side effects, and that Fabulatherapy is the most cost-effective and best-tolerated treatment they could prescribe.

But until that happy day arrives, we can always continue to self-medicate. Story is all around - pick your favourite kind, and get lost in another world. It works.

Life, the Universe, and Fabulatherapy. Fabulous, isn't it?