Before human time—before clinics, diagnoses, and therapy rooms—there were stories.
One of my favorites begins with Prometheus.
Prometheus defies the gods by stealing fire and giving it to humanity. Fire is more than warmth. It is technology, culture, imagination, language, medicine. It is consciousness itself. His gift elevates human beings—brings us closer to the heavens.
The gods, displeased with this uprising of potential, respond not by taking the fire back, but by striking somewhere more intimate: our curiosity.
Enter Pandora.
She is given a jar (later mistranslated as a box) by Zeus and told not to open it. Of course she opens it. Out rush disease, famine, envy, grief, and every manner of human suffering. Once released, these forces cannot be returned.
At the bottom of the jar remains one final presence: Elpis—Hope.
Scholars debate whether hope was a gift meant to help humanity endure suffering, or a final cruel trick that keeps us striving in a world already wounded. Either way, hope becomes uniquely human. It lives in the tension between suffering and possibility.
And this is where the ancient myth meets the therapy room.
The Fire We Steal From One Another
In group psychotherapy, something remarkable happens. People arrive burdened—sometimes ashamed—by the contents of their own jars. Anxiety, grief, addiction, anger, loneliness. They often believe their suffering is uniquely theirs.
Then someone speaks.
And another nods.
And suddenly, isolation cracks.
The psychiatrist Irvin D. Yalom identified what he called the curative factors in group psychotherapy. Among them are universality, altruism, interpersonal learning, catharsis, cohesion—and most importantly, the installation of hope.
Hope in group therapy does not arrive as a lecture or a technique. It emerges relationally.
One member says, “I’ve been where you are.”
Another says, “It doesn’t always feel like this.”
Someone else simply stays present when another person trembles.
That is the fire.
Prometheus gave humanity literal fire. In group therapy, we give one another psychological fire—the courage to face suffering without being consumed by it.