★ Pioneers the “Gestalt dismantling” of fairy tales, turning classic texts directly into psychotherapy training grounds.
★ All cases are taken verbatim from the original books or animated films—no invented plotlines—showing how to conduct deep psychological analysis without adding or deleting anything.
★ Covers common themes such as “frozen self,” “parent-child separation,” “symbiotic dependency,” and “family scripts.” Readers can immediately apply the insights to themselves or their clients.
★ Every character analysis offers concrete questions and intervention demos, combining professional rigour with hands-on value.
• Vivid language makes complex concepts accessible; non-specialists can follow the therapist’s lens to see “inside the consulting room.”

Why do “Cinderellas” keep casting themselves as martyrs? How do Shrek and Fiona transcend looks and prejudice to build real intimacy? After Kay is pierced by the mirror shard, how does that “narcissistic wound” freeze his entire self?
Psychologist and Gestalt therapist Dr. Natalia Oliferovich, together with Gennady Malyuchyk, invite the most familiar fairy-tale and animated characters into the therapy room. They do not rewrite the stories; they listen with a clinician’s ear to the recurring life scripts: the self encased in ice, the mother who cannot complete separation, the girl who puts on an orphan mask again and again, the symbiotic couple trapped in a tower, the youth who refuses to repeat his father’s fate…
There is no fabricated plot. The authors do one thing only: translate key scenes, dialogues, and conflicts from the originals into observable psychological phenomena, then demonstrate how a therapist asks questions, empathizes, and offers alternative choices. Thus, Ivanushka’s shifting between human and goat forms becomes a metaphor for dissociation; Merida’s stepmother, unable to let go of her child, is revealed as a classic symbiotic parent; the Little Mermaid exposes an oral-phase attachment dilemma. Each dismantling is a live teaching session: the fairy tale becomes an intuitive sandtray, letting readers witness therapy in action and carry the perspective back into their own lives.
If you are tired of preachy psychology books, this one offers vivid “stage replays”: the characters appear, the therapist questions, and we sit in the audience—until, in a sudden moment, we realize this is our story too.

Gennady Malyuchyk
Renowned psychologist, Gestalt therapist, Candidate of Psychological Sciences, associate professor. Certified by the Moscow Gestalt Institute (MGI) and the European Association for Gestalt Therapy (EAGT); board member of the Belarusian Psychotherapeutic Association. Author of over 200 scholarly papers, two monographs, and several psychology textbooks. His best-known works include Fairy Tales on the Couch and the Projective Fairy-Tale Cards—unique integrations of psychology and literature that enjoy wide readership. This book distils his years of clinical experience to help readers recognise and escape psychological traps and live freer, more active lives.

Natalia Oliferovich
Ph.D. in Psychology, licensed psychotherapist with 35 years of front-line experience. Author of Fairy Tales on the Couch and Beware! The Princes in Fairy Tales Are All Traps. For decades she has combined clinical practice and training, placing case material side-by-side with fairy-tale texts to show how the simplest stories disclose the most intricate human truths.