The world therapeutic is derived from a Greek root meaning to attend, to treat. Today, the word is used to mean having or exhibiting healing powers. Therapeutic refers then to the treatment of disease or disorder by remedial agents or methods. We use stories in everyday life to pass time, convey information, learn about the world and about ourselves. We use stories to survive and to imagine the future, as well as for a host of instrumental purposes, and, no less importantly, for the pleasure in hearing and telling them.
Stories are part of our human, tribal, social inheritance.
Stories are not only the great delight of children but important for adults as a way of knowing the world and marshaling the resources and character to find a place for oursleves in the world. Today, there is a recognition that lawyers too are story-tellers. Lawyers listen to the stories of clients and then translate these stories so that other lawyers and judges and public officals can decide the merits of these stories and what legal action will follow from their telling. Judges too are in the story-telling business, although the writing of judicial opinions would have us ignore this element of the judge's work. Note There have, of course, always been forms of education, particularly those associated with the liberal arts, that have exalted literature, and it is in literature we find all manner of stories, in particular those stories which become the bearers of culture.