The Healing Strength of Puppetry

The puppetry impulse is one of the most important art therapy impulses for the coming century. Why? Because with hand and string puppets something is possible that cannot be achieved in theater or in movies, namely that the spiritual and soul expressions of the players are completely in the service of the images that are created with the help of the puppets.

Fairy tales, plays and everyday scenes that are presented in this innocent fashion come to life in a way that allows the onlooker, especially the child, to take in the content consciously, without the overpowering soul impact of real theater drama. The spiritual image content appears in the foreground and the imaginative capacity receives rich nourishment while at the same time the constitution of the child is guarded from impressions that are too forceful and that would disturb the flow of images.

The marionette play is, for adults, a conscious, and for children, an unconscious, education in imaginative vision, and therefore it is an activator of the highest order of the forces of self-healing. The marionette and puppet theater is on top of everything, the only effective alternative to television and the multi-media culture of our day.

I want to hereby warmly speak out on behalf of the Goetheanum in support of encouraging a worldwide puppet theatre culture, and beg everyone that reads this to consider how they can financially and otherwise contribute to this goal.

​~ Michaela Glöckler, M.D., Director, Medical Section, Anthroposophical Society in Rundbrief Michaeli 1999 no. 37