Ilana Simons Discusses How Psychologists Use Myth to Heal

This Rider-Waite tarot deck image is in the public domain.

Both an accomplished storyteller and psychologist, Ilana Simons is one of the most multi-talented people I've ever met. She started her career with a PhD in Literature, which she taught as well as writing at New York University and the New School. When discussing Virginia Woolf with her students, Simons found that she most enjoyed having a dialogue about the psychological questions that came up in texts like To the Lighthouse, which she calls "an observation map of the mind." Simons ended up publishing a book with Penguin Press, A Life of One's Own: A Guide to Better Living through the Work and Wisdom of Virginia Woolf. Then she decided to do a PhD in Psychology. 

Meanwhile, Simons' creative life was also developing beyond only writing. She put together the one-woman show All Together Now, an audience award winner at The New York Fringe Festival in 2016, in which she projected a literary movie about her family at times on the wall and others on the ceiling while her audience watched on their backs. Her performance included moments during which she danced, and she also filmed herself making sculptures.

Simons other accomplishments include originating and editing Tin House Reels, which was an online site for short videos at Tin House magazine. These days she makes animated movies about psychological topics for www.Ilanasimonsart.com, and she blogs for Psychology Today.

Gustave Moreau’s “Œdipus the Wayfarer” is in the public domain.

Simons' artistic experience puts her into a unique position as a psychologist. While many in her field have an interest in mythology, particularly those who use the psychoanalytic techniques established by Sigmund Freud, most understand stories as a helpful tool for healing. For Simons, though, stories are also what she does.

I asked Simons how she uses mythology to help her patients during a zoom chat on January 28, 2021. The following is an edited and shortened transcript of our interview.

How does your experience as a storyteller help you treat your patients?

I think of psychotherapy as a joint storytelling. It was interesting thinking about the word "myth" when you talked to me about doing this conversation -- the mind immediately goes to the known myths from past traditions. But myth, loosely, is a story that tends to stand with some relationship to the truth, but also some distance from the truth. It captures the truth enough to last, and in psychology we're so often looking at the myths about ourselves. . . working psychologically means uncovering your own myths and seeing what power they hold.

How do people form their personal mythologies?

That's fascinating because I was talking to a client this week about this. We were trying to think about her mythology, part of which is "I am a misfit." We went back to the early memories that started the "I am a misfit" song in her head. . . I’ll change the details here, but to give you the gist of the myth, if you as a child have gum in your hair one day and kids are laughing at you, depending on who you are, the day you're having, and who these kids are in relation to you, you can start to internalize the story one way or another. My client was like "oh yeah, I'm a misfit. These kids don’t get me." Given the factors in our lives, these stories can snowball. 

Why do we form these personal narratives?

The narrative has a couple functions. It's comforting. If we didn’t have a story about ourselves, we'd be in chaos, with no way to organize who we are and no way to sit in the world with a sense of belonging, being and solidity. So we need stories, but they can also become cages. 

There are also folktales and myths that maybe mirror some of the stories that we tell about ourselves.

John William Waterhouse’s Circe Offering the Cup to Odysseus is in the public domain.

Yes. This client has always identified with the witch, an archetype that has many aspects. She had been living in her witch aspect as someone hurt who was out for revenge -- a feminist, dark energy -- but then she said she's been working on trying to stop categorizing things that way. Now she's the witch who sits in the middle and does alchemy. She can still align with the witch archetype when she wants, but her objectives are different.

Madeline Miller's novel Circe retells the story of a traditionally evil, bad witch from her perspective, making her a good character. It's the story of how a woman goes from weak to badass. Give it to your client!. . . What do psychologists have in common with storytellers?

In the field I work in, there are so many ways to summon a new story -- even in the tone of voice. . . Psychologists aren’t distant from witch doctors. . . The storyteller in the village is someone you go to for a moment removed from small talk -- you're looking for strange talk, the talk that can welcome you into a new story, the strange experience or the portal to somewhere. Part of the work of storytellers and healers is offering an atmosphere, a tone of voice, a serenity and a gravity to the story. If I can hold an experience with gravity -- I don’t want to lose my sense of humor either -- but if I can hold it with sanctity, my words are almost pulled to the religious. Then it does something for the moment. Sometimes it's not about content. It's just about treating a story with a slowness and respect that makes it shimmer. 

Do you ever feel psychologists are playing a religious role?

I would say that they’re closely aligned. . . I see a therapist who does voice dialogue therapy with me. One day I told her about the voice I was scared sometimes to take on and we named it the rabbi or the cantor (one who sings and leads people in prayer in a Jewish religious service). . . The cantor voice can be a gift to somebody going through a difficult experience. It's important to be in the presence of someone who says that suffering -- that complex experience you're going through --- is important and you can handle it. . . The cantor almost sings about it. It's important to be someone who welcomes in that dark experience without shushing it away.. . All myths have suffering at the heart of some transformation. 

We live in a culture where there's so much pressure to hide your suffering. . .It's good you can work in a profession that enables you to help people be more authentic.. . . Could you talk a bit about how the voice dialogue therapy you use draws on Carl Jung?

Voice dialogue comes out of the Jungian tradition. Basically, Jung respects that we have the various archetypes within us. Voice dialogue therapy assumes the self is made up of various selves that were either reinforced through our early environment -- our family, our culture, our friends -- or disowned. . . For example, almost everyone has an inner critic aspect, which can look different from person to person, but is often carrying a whip. In voice dialogue, we talk about what these various selves sound like. . . Does anything come to mind to you for yourself?

Jean Baptiste Regnault’s Cupid and Psyche is in the public domain.

I'm sure there's an aggressive shadow self inside me that I've been repressing for a long time.

Great. So If we could, then I'd ask to speak to that energy in you. Shift your energy and feel yourself access that aggressive —

So I should sit with a manspread immediately?

Yes, tune in to the body! . . . I know you're also a teacher, a writer, a daughter. . . there are so many other conscientious sides to you, but I would ask only that you would have free reign to speak to the aggression inside of you – don’t apologize, justify, or put it into context. Just speak it! The idea is that once you get to access that energy again and again, without shame, you come to know this part of you is there for a reason. It's a part of you that does – that is angry -- that wants to get something it doesn’t have and that’s a very important drive.

The Aware Ego is the part that mediates between the selves and knows these selves exist and have a need and a purpose. Self-awareness, self-acceptance or self-love is having a dialogue where none of these parts gets shut out or put in the basement. You can say "oh, there's my aggressive self, and that self needs something today."

The World card from the Rider-Waite deck is in the public domain.

If you don't do that, and you have an aggressive self and an obedient child self and you haven't differentiated between the two --  which are both legitimate parts of self -- then you’re going to put them into the basement for a while, but they're there for a reason. If you don’t have a good dialogue between the aggressive and obedient child, you end up with passive aggressive behavior or half expressed needs. If the aggressive self doesn’t have a muzzle, you let her say her peace and the obedient child can give it a frame. You don’t want to end up with behaviors that don’t know which category they come from and end up being half-expressed.

 I love that. I love the idea of sitting in an aspect of personality that I don't feel entitled to having!

Talk therapy doesn't need to be "tell me about your day." It can be experiential.