Story Medicine
Story Medicine: Ancient Tales and Their Medicine for Modern Life
Ancient fairy tales, myths, and legends contain profound wisdom for modern life.
Psychotherapist Joe Summerfield explores traditional stories from cultures worldwide - Greek myths, Grimm's fairy tales, Norse legends, Indigenous tales, African folklore, and more - revealing the medicine encoded within them.
Each episode offers three parts: a story told in full, an analysis uncovering symbolic meaning and contemporary relevance, and practical integration exercises to help you embody the medicine.
Use it your way:
Let these stories accompany your morning coffee, evening wind-down, or household pottering. These tales make perfect companions for quiet moments.
Or engage more deeply: the weekly integration practices form a structured personal development course. Over time, this consistent work can significantly shift your experience of life... and it's entirely free.
Perfect for:
Adults seeking psychological depth, young people exploring life's questions, parents sharing wisdom with children, therapists and educators, mythology enthusiasts, and anyone curious about the collective unconscious and archetypal patterns shaping our lives.
Topics explored:
Jungian psychology, fairy tale analysis, mythology, depth psychology, personal transformation, archetypal patterns, shadow work, individuation, collective unconscious, traditional wisdom, therapeutic storytelling.
New episodes weekly.
Hosted by Joe Summerfield, psychotherapist, relational therapist, and creator of Connected State Therapy. Drawing on Jungian psychology and over 20 years of therapeutic experience, Joe bridges ancient wisdom and modern application. From shadow work to individuation, from grief to wholeness, each story offers medicine for navigating the human experience.
Story Medicine
S1E10 - The Crane Wife: Medicine for Authenticity and the Courage to See
In this episode of Story Medicine, we explore "The Crane Wife" (Tsuru Nyōbō) from Japanese folklore. This is a tale about the cost of hiding who we really are, and the courage it takes to face truth even when it threatens everything we believe we have.
A young man rescues a wounded crane from a hunter's trap. Soon after, a beautiful woman arrives claiming to be his wife. She weaves magnificent cloth that brings wealth, asking only that he never look inside the weaving room whilst she works. When he finally looks, he discovers his wife is the crane, plucking her own feathers to weave the cloth, her body raw and wounded from the sacrifice. Once her true form is revealed, she must leave... not because he violated a boundary, but because the relationship was built on what each of them kept hidden, on conditions that couldn't survive contact with reality.
This story speaks to anyone who has given themselves away to prove their worthiness, anyone who has hidden their true nature convinced it wouldn't be enough, anyone who has chosen not to look too closely at what they suspect might be true. It offers medicine for recognising when we're disposing of our natural gifts in favour of what we think we need to give, when we're complicit in avoiding reality, and why facing truth - however painful - is the only path to genuine connection.
The episode includes the complete story told in full, depth psychology analysis revealing the archetypal patterns and symbolic meaning, and three practical integration exercises to help you embody the medicine.
Learn more about Joe's therapeutic work: www.joesummerfield.co.uk
Connect on Instagram: @joe.therapies
