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 As an educational counsellor and bibliotherapist, I work with children in the elementary school as well as in a teachers’ training college, preparing the students for their therapeutic and educational work with children.
Last year, we Israelis lived through one of the most traumatic periods of our existence. There were many terrorist acts in the country, suicidal bombings that cost the lives of innocent citizens…. Children were also involved: many were badly wounded or maimed, some lost their lives. Others lost their parents, leaving them orphaned. Moreover, many parents of young children who were not directly affected by the bombings became over-protective toward them, transmitting their fears and anxieties onto them. Many of these children could not concentrate on their studies, were restless, and regressed in behaviour. Scenes of acting out were common during this period. To top this, our prime minister, Mr. Rabin, was assassinated by a fellow Jew. This was the last straw. It was even more traumatic for the children, as he was, on the one had, a father figure, while on the other hand, some of the pupils had heard political utterings against him in ther homes. This led to their feeling rather guilty.
As can be very well imagined, it was almost impossible to treat these children. We tried many and various methods. Many of them were almost catatonic, depressed, and would not cooperate. On the spur of the moment, I took out the ECCO cards. I laid them out on the table, face up, and told the children to choose one that reminded them of recent events. Unbelievably, these cards were the only key to their bottled up fears, frustrations, and traumas. Somehow, these cards seemed to enable them to project their feelings onto the abstract forms. My next step was to ask them to find, in the very same cards, some silver lining, something that gave them hope for the future. Each and every child was able to do so.
This gave me a bright idea: I invited their parents for a session, working in the same way with them. I explained that I wanted them to know what their children had undergone. They were to imagine which card their own child had chosen and what he or she had said. Naturally, they also projected their own feelings onto these cards, and after a deep discussion, they were mentally free to help their children.
It goes without saying that my students at the teachers’ training college learned to do the same with their pupils. The ECCO cards are a wonderful help, at all times, in working with children.
Adina S. Flasher, PhD
Kiriat Bialik, Israel
Excerpted from the book Strawberries Beyond My Window: Games of Association for Opening the Door to Creativity and Communitcation, by Waltraud Kirschke.
In the 6th grade grammar lesson we were discussing word order in sentences in terms of subject and predicate, how the subject is always a “naming word” of which one asks, “Who or what is doing something?” and the predicate is always a “doing word.” The children were asked to formulate simple sentences and to name the subject and predicate in them. A game with SAGA images and the OH [original deck] word cards stimulated an “OH!” experience for all of them.
Each child drew one SAGA picture and one OH word card bearing a verb (I had sorted the cards in advance). The picture card was to be the subject and the word card the predicate. Each child constructed the shortest possible sentence with his card set — for example, “The raven takes” — and in doing so playfully and intuitively grasped the concepts of subject and predicate.
Edith Schuette ~ Teacher
Hamburg, Germany
Excerpted from the book Strawberries Beyond My Window: Games of Association for Opening the Door to Creativity and Communitcation, by Waltraud Kirschke.
In showing the children (six years old) MORENÁ for the first time, I was innundated by questions: “Why are there so many ants on these cards?” “Ants are everywhere, but what are they doing?” “Aren’t the people bothered by the ants?” Therefore, before we actually began playing with the cards we exchanged jungle knowledge. Each child told what he or she knows about the animals, plants, and people who live in the tropical forests.
We also talked about what functions and tasks the individual inhabitants of the forest fulfill, what characteristics they have and what they look like. It became apparnet that for many of the children much of the information was completely new. Afterwards, I told them about the importance of ants and other insects to the life of the jungle.
After this exchange of information we began playing with the cards. Our game was accompanied by Latin American music playing softly in the background, which enhanced even more the warm atmosphere.
Robert Doman ~ Teacher
Lublin, Poland
Excerpted from the book Strawberries Beyond My Window: Games of Association for Opening the Door to Creativity and Communitcation, by Waltraud Kirschke.
During my first play with OH cards, brought by a visiting friend, I pulled the combination of “Failure” and a picture of an office desk. Since I’m still trying to remedy the career damage of an extended illness leave a few years ago, my first thought was, “What if I fail at work?” As I sat with that, feeling agitated, a second thought crossed my mind: “What if defining myself by my work is a failure as a person?” OH! I felt enormously better.
University Professor
Canada
 Ofra Ayalon, one of the creators of the COPE deck shares her experience of using PERSONA cards in a peace-training and reconciliation workshop…
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While politicians from the warring sides in former-Yugoslavia were negotiating a brittle peace agreement in Dayton, Ohio, in mid-November of 1995 a group of 28 psychologists from Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia and Montenegro convened in an isolated, snow-covered, hilltop hotel on the Hungarian border to negotiate the psychological prerequisites for reconciliation. Meeting under the auspices of UNICEF and U.K. Jewish Aid, our training team was composed of three Israeli psychologists (Ayalon, Lahad and Gal), experts in issues dealing with war-traumatized populations.
One of the leading themes in this workshop was exploring the archetypes of Shadow and Evil and learning to recognize the projections of internal evil on the image of the Enemy. Our purpose was to show how an “Enemy” attracts “demonic” attributes which “justify” hatred, persecution and annihilation.
The purpose of presenting this theme was to raise participants’ awareness of the duality of “good” and “evil” within the human psyche and to experience and understand the human tendency to project “evil” onto others. By re-owning these rejected parts of ourselves we take the first step toward accepting the “other.” This process of awareness demands increasing the ability to contain opposites — such as good and evil, right and wrong, et cetera — within ourselves and to integrate them into our personalities.
We used PERSONA cards as the trigger for these projections in a process which we called “Me and Not-Me (a Blind Date): a dialogue between the imaginary representations of inner dichotomization.”
The PERSONA images were used in two phases — first, to split, and, later, to integrate projections of the “me” and the “not-me.”
We asked the participants to choose two images from the PERSONA portrait deck, to bring them together as if on a “blind date” and then to create a dialogue between them. The instructions were as follows:
- Choose one image that you like and one image that you don’t like.
- Place them in front of you on a piece of paper. Divide the paper in two.
- Write whatever comes to mind for each image.
- Choose a real or an imagined space where these two people can meet. Who will be the first to notice the other? Let them tell each other about themselves — where they live, how old they are, with whom they live. What are their first reactions, feelings, thoughts toward each other? Let them respond to each other.
- See where this dialogue takes you.
- Sit in couples and share your stories.
- Reflect on the process and on the following questions:
Were you able to bring them closer to each other?
Did your feelings about them change at all?
Can these people co-exist or do they need to stay separate?
The process: Participants created imaginary dialogues with their personified portraits, wrote about them, addressed them directly, role-played and listened carefully to their own voices. These creative activities helped participants expand their self-awareness and acceptance of their inner demons. Later, this process moved from imaginary to the cognitive channel through a re-framing of the process and discussion of methods of bridge-building between polarized ethnic and political groups. The PERSONA cards were found to be very useful for triggering intense emotions (such as love and hate) because the images are portrayed in a way that makes them personal and archetypal at one and the same time. The same process that was used in this workshop for reconciliation and peace work between countries is often used successfully in my clinical work for couples and families.
Dr. Ofra Ayalon, psychologist, couple and family therapist, bibliotherapist
Tivon, Israel
Excerpted from the book Strawberries Beyond My Window: Games of Association for Opening the Door to Creativity and Communitcation, by Waltraud Kirschke.
Edward Chan, from Hong Kong, shares some of his experiences with using the OH cards…
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The first time I met OH Card was in a Couple Training course held in 1989. When I picked up a picture card and the tutor told me to associate with my own history, I said that the picture was in a misty way that I hardly match it correctly with any solid incidents happened in my life. Years after I still encounter some participants in our courses render the same comment as I did. I know the meaning of “rational.”
Being a tutor in social worker training courses, Mrs. Maria Kwong said that the faintness of the pictures is a very effective key to open the door of everybody’s interior world. It touches the field of feelings inside each person that helps to view the true self of each of them. When participant matches the picture card with the word card, it often brings a feeling of shocking on viewing oneself conception. Usually they find a deeper meaning of life for themselves by viewing the set of the cards, and the most important thing is that they find the path of hope in life. Mrs. Kwong always invites the participants to use their five senses to contact with the pictures. We hardly can know what happened in each of these participants in their lives after the training courses, but the fact is that most of them will buy one set of OH Card for their professional use.
Sr. Dominica Cheng, a spiritual teacher, often asks her students to describe what they saw on the pictures through their intuition with relationship to their experiences in their daily life. The “In and Out” traveling is very useful to achieve inspirations. Going in the content of pictures and coming out of it back to one’s life story in history, then stay away from the stories and go back to the content of the pictures in order to obtain more inspiration. The connection between the emotions begets from the picture and the actual life experience outside the picture creates amazing results. Here is one example: one picks up a picture card showing a man with a kid, the immediate connection she came out is the man is her father and she feels sad about her parent’s divorce. Coming back to the present life experience, suddenly she recognized the kid is her father – so week and helpless at the age of 70s.
Sr. Cheng said that OH Card is a very useful instrument for spiritual guidance.
When I see the OH pictures today and still think that the card is misty, I know that I am on the way to know myself better.
Edward Chan
Hong Kong
Excerpted from original material for the book Strawberries Beyond My Window: Games of Association for Opening the Door to Creativity and Communitcation, 2nd German Edition, by Waltraud Kirschke.
The first time I met OH Card was in a Couple Training course held in 1989. When I picked up a picture card and the tutor told me to associate with my own history, I said that the picture was in a misty way that I hardly match it correctly with any solid incidents happened in my life. Years after I still encounter some participants in our courses render the same comment as I did. I know the meaning of “rational”.
Being a tutor in social worker training courses, Mrs. Maria Kwong said that the faintness of the pictures is a very effective key to open the door of everybody’s interior world. It touches the field of feelings inside each person that helps to view the true self of each of them. When participant matches the picture card with the word card, it often brings a feeling of shocking on viewing oneself conception. Usually they find a deeper meaning of life for themselves by viewing the set of the cards, and the most important thing is that they find the path of hope in life. Mrs. Kwong always invites the participants to use their five senses to contact with the pictures. We hardly can know what happened in each of these participants in their lives after the training courses, but the fact is that most of them will buy one set of OH Card for their professional use.
Sr. Dominica Cheng, a spiritual teacher, often asks her students to describe what they saw on the pictures through their intuition with relationship to their experiences in their daily life. The “In and Out” traveling is very useful to achieve inspirations. Going in the content of pictures and coming out of it back to one’s life story in history, then stay away from the stories and go back to the content of the pictures in order to obtain more inspiration. The connection between the emotions begets from the picture and the actual life experience outside the picture creates amazing results. Here is one example: one picks up a picture card showing a man with a kid, the immediate connection she came out is the man is her father and she feels sad about her parent’s divorce. Coming back to the present life experience, suddenly she recognized the kid is her father – so week and helpless at the age of 70s.
Sr. Cheng said that OH Card is a very useful instrument for spiritual guidance.
When I see the OH pictures today and still think that the card is misty, I know that I am not on the way to know myself better.
Lessons from the OH Cards
 I’m constantly reminded by the cards that perception is an interpretation, not a fact. The cards with their images and words are facts but what we see is up to us. Take the clown card. I had one client who drew that card and then gave herself permission to put a smile on her face even if she was not feeling happy. She told me that eventually the act of smiling would spread to her actually being happy.
Yet another client who had insistently reported that all was fine with her, she didn’t really need counselling. Still, every week she made and showed up for her appointment with me. In frustration I used the cards with the hope that they could help her to verbalize whatever was causing her pain. And she drew the clown card. Only then was she able to speak of the abuse she had suffered as a child by people wearing masks. These were not happy memories but a shift had happened and she was ready to work through her pain. We always used the cards after that in our sessions.
And then there was my handsome client who some perceived as arrogant and having everything he wanted in the world. Others claimed he had to be shallow since he seemed to enjoy a life without pain. He drew the clown card and the word card “NAKED.” Smiling, he nodded his head and commented without hesitation, “This is obvious. It is easy for me to be physically naked before others. It is much harder for me to be psychologically naked so I wear a mask.” All I could say was, “Wow!” We have our own answers inside us. And others, books, movies, and yes cards can inspire us to go within and rediscover our own truths.
Dawn Brown, M.Ed. (Counselling) has over 20 years of experience as a psychotherapist, teacher, and trainer specializing in life transitions. In addition, Dawn is an international speaker and the author of That Perception Thing! She heads Perception Shift, a company dedicated to creating a healthy approach to living.
Excerpted from original material for the book Strawberries Beyond My Window: Games of Association for Opening the Door to Creativity and Communitcation, 2nd German Edition, by Waltraud Kirschke.
It was in fact Saturday – the day had come. And panic swept over me as I began asking myself, “What was I thinking?” I had sent out the invitations and now I had to show up. I continued to create internal dialogue around my lack of expertise in working with the cards. Until I thought, “Okay, what’s really going on here? What do I need to know to move through this?” And I pulled out my OH Cards.
One-Card Spread: Word (Expert) Image (#8 Hand Dealing Cards)
And I knew from this spread exactly what I needed to know in order to move through. In fact, I didn’t need to be an expert. We are each our own expert in receiving the insights available to us. OH is a powerful tool when we understand that the knowingness lives within us and these words and images help draw forth that knowingness by placing it before us using concrete images.
I continued with my plan for the gathering with my family. In attendance were probably sixteen or seventeen people, male and female, and of varying age groups. And we each held one question: “What do I need to let go of in order to move forward?” And the results were astonishing! In the normal comings and goings of life the people in this room hadn’t seen each other in a couple of years, but with the power of OH at hand each of us had been moved to very raw and vulnerable places. Even my grandmother, whose age is still in question, was available to what OH had to reveal to her. The evening went on with each of us exploring what was before us, what we needed to know, and discovering what forward moving action looked like for each of us individually.
Today, I’m most grateful for that then-dreaded day. I saw the power of OH.
Talisa Wisniewski
Chicago
Excerpted from original material for the book Strawberries Beyond My Window: Games of Association for Opening the Door to Creativity and Communitcation, 2nd German Edition, by Waltraud Kirschke.
Using the SAGA and MYTHOS decks as a jumping-off point for creativity has proved itself useful time and time again. As a writer, there are times when the words won’t flow and the creative spark is lost. At these times when my creativity is blocked, finding my way back on course is not easy.
Drawing a card from one of these packs allows me to take a step back from the work I am struggling with, and to refresh my mind with the newness of the image I see before me. Even a card that I have drawn and worked with many times before will have new meanings for me with each drawing. The state of mind that I am in will influence the shades of meaning I see, reflecting itself through the subtle overtones of the story that emerges.
The imagery fuels my mind, allowing me to wander into new territories and across unfamiliar terrain. As I allow my imagination free reign to make the associations that it chooses, to see the past or the future through the eyes of the card, I am able, at that moment, to let my mind touch new depths, to discover new possibilities.
Although the story that comes to me from the card may have no clear link to the work I was doing, the process of working with the image changes my thinking so that I am no longer stuck.
As well as using the cards in this way for creative work, I have used them for problem solving. Here, in a similar way, the story that comes from the card or cards will usually have no link to the problem, yet by firing up my creativity, my field of vision expands so that new solutions come into focus. The solutions that emerge are almost a by-product of the story that’s formed. Tapping into the hidden reserves of creativity allows the options to flow, and as they do, solutions present themselves for consideration.
Steven Weir
London, England
Excerpted from original material for the book Strawberries Beyond My Window: Games of Association for Opening the Door to Creativity and Communitcation, 2nd German Edition, by Waltraud Kirschke.
 Richard Martin is a storyteller and English teacher from England who now lives in Germany. He travels all over the world telling his stories to all kinds of people.
I use OH cards regularly in school as a teacher of English as a foreign language and in my teacher-training workshops on using storytelling in the classroom.
I usually use the SAGA and 1001 packs. One of the strongest points about these is the impact of the pictures. They not only look “powerful”, they have the strange ability to suggest diverse ideas to different people and in combination with different cards.
I usually use them in small groups to generate stories – in the English classroom these can be the basis for oral and then written work which then can provide the opportunity to consolidate grammar. In my experience students really enjoy using the cards.
I do various activities with them, some I learnt in a short workshop with Moritz Egetmeyer, some I more or less invent according to the needs and size of the group. The cards lend themselves to many activities.
I think that every teacher should have a pack in their repertoire. They are so useful for when you cannot think of what to do, and the results are always first-rate – which cannot be said for many stop-gap activities! I have not seen any of the other storytelling cards on the market, but teachers in workshops who have always agree that OH pictures are simply superior.
For more information about Richard, visit his website, Tell a Tale.
Related reading: Storytellers Using OH Cards
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