Fairy-Tale Therapy as a Psychological and Pedagogical Method in Working with Socially Excluded Youth, Pupils with Special Needs

The widespread use of fairy-tale materials in the educational process and psychocorrectional work stems from the imperatives of the new post-non-classical scientific paradigm, which is implemented in uniting the scientific and mythological worldviews, when, on the one hand, there is a need for theoretical interpretation of mythological ideas of humanity, and on the other hand, there is a need for using the mythological knowledge and metaphorical forms of their representation in scientific searches. Under such conditions, the fairy-tale-metaphorical resource of human development finds actualization in modern psychological and pedagogical science, which studies the peculiarities of children’s perception and understanding of fairy-tale content, which is considered as a means of upbringing, a special source of the formation of aesthetic feelings as well as a psychotherapeutic tool for solving many problems of children with special educational needs and the socially excluded youth.

Accordingly, the article outlines the main aspects of the fairy-tale not only as a developmental and educational, but also as a correctional and psychotherapeutic means of influencing children and youth.

It have been shown that the therapeutic effect of fairy-tale material largely stems from the effects of functional asymmetry of the hemispheres of the human brain when the right hemisphere functions mainly at the level of unconscious mental mechanisms. Thus, many problems of children with special educational needs and socially excluded youth are connected with the activity of these mental mechanisms and, at the psychotherapeutic level, acquire the status of psychiatric problems associated with fundamental psychotherapeutic phenomenon – the failure to react with the appropriate emotion to positive or negative events. Fairy-tales and psychotherapeutic stories appeal to the right-hemisphere aspect of the psyche of children and youth, which realizes their psychotherapeutic effect, bringing many problems to the surface of the conscious activity of the psyche.