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Narrative Therapy AN ARTICLE
Dr Bridgid Hess: in collaboration with Webster University, Geneva Campus Summary This entry offers an overview of the basic assumptions that Narrative Therapy makes, and some of the philosophy that has influenced it. It also gives some practical ways of forming and crafting questions using deconstructive language. This in turn opens space for stories that are waiting to be told, stories that connect to the possible. Throughout the text, I foreground embodied language that is rich in metaphor and lived experience. I have broken with the tradition of giving the reader theory at the beginning, in favour of placing it in a supportive position towards the end. Readers could equally read section two first which explains its background history and philosophy. Introduction I was drawn to Narrative therapy by ways of working that empower people and communities to write their own life stories, returning local knowledge to the centre and opening up stories to more possibilities of interpretation. Narrative Therapy moves away from an intrapsychic approach, in which people are understood to have a core identity, and where problems are surface manifestations of deeper truths that need expert interpretation (White 2000, p. 61). Narrative Therapy favours a post-structural approach, where identity is fluid and grows more like a rhizome than a tap root. I have harvested many crops of identities in this way over the years, picking where I had not sown and reaping through other peoples’ wisdom. This allows for multiple identities on an ever-evolving landscape of possibility, where our actions, along with others, constitute our beliefs and identities (White & Epston, 1990). Questions draw people away from an intrapsychic internalised state of being that has a fixed identity. For example, an internalised question might be, ‘How does this make me feel’? This assumes there is a core ‘me’. As Narrative therapists the feeling would be externalised and located in relationship to a context. The question might be ‘What does this feeling do to you?’ or, ‘What does this feeling make you think or believe about yourself?’, or ‘What would you call this feeling?’. This form of enquiry opens space and possibility to explore a feeling as something that is influencing or affecting a person, like a weather system or as a piece of clothing that we wear for a while. I found myself living and working for many years in Southern Africa, where the volatile tides of history were constantly hovering in the power relationships that were both past and present (Hess, 2006). Local knowledge had been overtaken by Western forms of therapy that had focused on the individual autonomous self. This had subtly excluded other possibilities of identity from emerging. In this way Narrative Therapy has a political edge to it, where subjugated stories are given more space to breathe. Narrative Therapy made sense to me. It moved away from individualist, western models of psychotherapy, favouring local collective knowledge, giving weight to the values and intentions that people hold for their lives, rather than a pathology. It drew me in through its rich descriptive metaphors that opened possibilities for so many more ways of knowing. I have found metaphors and stories invaluable when working in a cross-cultural context, where language is limited. An example of this was work I did on the mines in South Africa. I would train HIV facilitators (often with little English) for a week on being HIV facilitators. Fact-based learning had not had much impact. I worked with their local knowledges, focusing on what they valued and believed in their communities. Together we drew pictures of villages, wisdom figures, both living and dead. We were able to explore the ways in which HIV worked within their embodied contexts. Many believed HIV was a myth, created by a white man to kill them (alluding to power, control, and a history of oppression). They often spoke in their own languages, translating for me as they saw appropriate, which located control more in their hands. This in turn opened up possibilities that I could not imagine if I had been more structured in my approach. I was constantly amazed at how fully engaged they were in the process. Although the odds were stacked against me in my colour, gender, language and history of oppression, there was something in the work that held us on the same page. We were able to explore and imagine, through drawing on boards, ways that problems have trapped and affected them and how HIV worked in their communities. This gave opportunities for other stories to emerge and for them to be in charge of their own stories. This way of working challenges the modern structuralist notion of pathology that has labelled people as somehow lacking (Parry & Doan, 1994). 1 Stories waiting to be toldNarrative Therapy is, as a you might imagine, about how we tell our stories, what we select and what we consider newsworthy to talk about. Walther and Carey (2009, p. 6) put it this way: “As therapists, we are interested in notions that are supportive of new possibilities and multiple-storied lives. What else might we see or hear in a person’s situation, other than a singular description?” I was invited some years ago to a church-based group to speak on marriage. They had been listening to an American video series that focused on western metaphors around a dyadic unit of husband and wife. I asked the question ‘What are the stories in your families that hold the wisdom and hope for the future?’ This intentional question situated them in their own history and traditions, rather than in some a-historic linear assumption of what marriage should look like from a dominant view of the church at the time. The conversation turned from passive recipients to co-creators of living stories, moving from heads to life-giving memories. They gave such rich and full descriptions of people who had shaped their lives. Some of their own parents had broken traditional gendered boundaries, in order to help carry water or care for children. These are the stories waiting to be told, stories that challenge some of the unexamined assumptions we make about life. These stories also contradicted much of the dominant gender-based violence that goes on in the community, building up evidence of living respectfully in the world. This in turn influences how we speak and make meaning of our lives. It takes us on a new trajectory of possibilities that I could not have predicted. This of course should never eclipse stories of abuse and the very real effects of violence and accountability. Narrative therapists could be described as helping to critically edit texts that have become taken-for-granted as assumed truth. It has taken much of its wisdom and metaphors from the Arts, Post-structural philosophy and discursive practices (a longer discussion of which you will find later in this chapter). Foucault (1988, p. 155), when describing discourse, says: “Critique does not consist in saying that things are not good the way they are. It consists in seeing on what type of assumptions, of familiar notions, of established and unexamined ways of thinking these accepted practices are based”. The therapist’s position is like that of an investigative journalist, who is intrigued by the twists and turns of the journey. They act as an editor on the person’s own text and are particularly attentive and curious about parts of stories that might have been overlooked when a person focuses on a ‘problem story’. The assumption is that every story has its weaknesses and every story is context dependent. Morgan (2003, p. 3) says: “I sometimes think of the possibilities for the directions of the conversation as if they are roads on a journey. There are many cross-roads, intersections, paths and tracks to choose from. With each step, a new and different cross road or intersection emerges – forward, back, right, left, diagonal, in differing degrees. With each step that I take with the person consulting me, we are opening more possible directions. We can choose where to go and what to leave behind”. 1.1. Maps on a journeyMaps show a migration on a journey that is moving, changing and evolving. White called this a migration of identity, where possibility is constantly evolving into new destinations. He loved maps and just before his unexpected early death in 2008, devoted a whole book to maps of narrative practice. He says: “When I was a young boy it was maps that made it possible for me to dream those other worlds up and imaginatively transport myself to other places” (White, 2007, p. 3). Walther and Carey (2009, p. 6) develop this idea by make use of Deleuze’s concept of a line of flight from the territory that we are experiencing in order to reach a different terrain of life which offers other possibilities. We select certain ‘truths’ or incidents as landmarks on our maps. These landmarks are supported and linked over time by different events in order to come to certain conclusions about our identity. Morgan (2000, p. 7) uses an analogy of stars in the sky. Our eyes are drawn to familiar constellations, joining the dots in order to code our experience. As therapists we focus on finding different stars and forming new constellations or maps that can help show us a new direction that leads to a different more life-giving conclusion. In this way we move from what is described as a thin description towards a thick description, a term developed in social anthropology (Geertz, 1973). Recent developments that link neuroscience and narrative therapy show that our brains have more ability to change than we thought. Neural pathways are programmed into dominant fear-based maps that aid our ability to survive (Beaudoin & Zimmerman, 2011). Finding exceptions to these pathways, alternate stories, supports our brains in creating new preferred maps that generate different experiences. These exceptions to the rule are not located in the thinking brain, but rather built up through lived experience and relational practice in the stories we tell about ourselves. This involves developing a thorough description of the territory as we map the trajectory of the problem story and how it has evolved and developed. After examining these maps, White suggests that exploring alternate maps helped him “to respond to people in ways that open space for them to explore neglected aspects of the territories of their own lives. This provides people with avenues of possibility for addressing the predicaments and problems of their lives in ways that they wouldn’t have imagined” (2007, p. 5). People become curious about territories that they might have neglected or overlooked. A major influence in White’s earlier work was expanding on Gregory Bateson’s question: ‘What restrains people from moving on with their lives?’. Bateson was interested in evolutionary biology and how organisms could code something new. He called this ‘news of difference’. He concluded that organisms only change over time when differences are recognised and coded (White, 1986). White developed this idea by exploring how problems prevent people from changing and comparing this to times where these problems do not rear their heads. To do this he externalised the problem. 1.2 Externalising conversations Narrative Therapy is perhaps best known for the way it externalises a problem and separates a person from its negative influence. White (2004, p. 4) says: “amongst other things, externalising conversations have made it possible for people to separate their sense of identity from problem-saturated or deficit-centred accounts of who they are, and this has provided a basis for them to join with others in the rich descriptions of alternative accounts of their lives, of their relationships, and of their identities”. The iconic example of this was White’s work with a child who suffered from encopresis. The child called the problem ‘sneaky poo’ (White, 1984). Another example he gives (2007, pp. 11-22) is with a family who came to consult with him about their son who was diagnosed with ADHD. It is particularly interesting how he skilfully deconstructs the diagnosis by asking questions such as ‘what sort of ADHD does he suffer from?’ and ‘how would you know what ADHD looks like?’. There are many transcripts of conversations that demonstrate this way of externalising (Morgan, 2000; White, 2007; Freedman & Combs, 2000). It is important to mention here that externalising conversations are not about the individual autonomous self on a private journey. The skill involves a constant weaving of stories that are connected, and in relationship with other people. It fosters a relational sense of identity (White, 2007, p. 59). Freedman (1996, p. 49) describes an externalising conversation she had with herself. She had always considered herself a shy person. She changed her perception of shyness to the question ‘what are the effects of shyness in my life?’. This altered her experience of shyness and allowed her to begin a process of freeing herself from this limitation. 1.3 Developing a preferred story A person came to consult with me concerning a very frightening situation he was about to go into; we described it as going back into the lion’s mouth. He came to a rather negative and thin conclusion about himself, describing himself as ‘passive-aggressive’. I asked him more about passive-aggression and what it had made him believe about himself. I also asked how it came about that he believed this to be true. He told me of many times that he had given in to other people through fear. This had led him to being walked over. He described how ashamed he was of this behaviour. I was interested in times where this has not been true. He gave an example of stopping in a dark tunnel in order to protect a homeless man who was being bullied. After the conversation, I asked him to write what was important to him in our conversation. His own writing became a witness to him making a stand for other possibilities. This was the beginning of us generating new more empowering maps of the possible. We were writing these maps into our own Encyclopedia of the possible. Together we were constructing possibilities of stories that had been overlooked by dominant labels. In the session we had used a metaphor for this passive-aggressive behaviour. It was like a person who comes upon a pride of lions. The person rolls onto his back into a subservient position, as a form of protection from being hurt. He writes: This subservient position - don’t eat me, I am silent and harmless….. I roll over in the company of dominant people - allow myself to be steamrollered, letting my boundaries be transgressed, not realising it until it’s too late….. And yet, I am going back into ‘the lions’ mouth’. It is an act of courage - the boy going back down the tunnel to stand up for the homeless man… No fear of consequence in that moment. Simply ‘I must. It’s right’. In this instance, we found what appeared to be an arbitrary incident of courage that contradicted the dominant story of passive-aggressive that had taken on a truth status, a sparkling moment that is waiting to take its rightful place in the story. Questions are invited that interpret the problem as relating to a transition or rite of passage in a person’s life. Questions are oriented towards what they might be needing to separate themselves from. There would be a focus of enquiry about beliefs that are not helping them to move forward and finding out upon what assumptions these beliefs are based. The person is then asked questions that connect some past events when they might have done things that work, and projecting this into the future, as with the dark tunnel. In order to develop a richer description of this, we could ask what this knowledge might tell them about their problem-solving abilities? This opens up new lines of enquiry that offer opportunities for particular markers on their maps, finding treasure that had been overlooked. The magic of the possible happens when we allow space for that which we could not have previously imagined. 1.4 Markers on a map Alternate stories are built upon new evidence as it emerges. These become defining moments and provide experiences that give markers on a map where people can build up alternate stories. These stories become ‘rites of passage’ (White & Epston, 1990). A rite of passage allows a person or a community to reconstruct their journey. This separates the problem from the person and avoids classifications that diagnose problems as breakdowns or regression or dysfunction, restrictive metaphors that are associated with psychopathology. Letters can be used as markers on a map. I once had a client who experienced particular isolation. He was challenging his sexual identity in a country where ‘gay’ was considered a crime. We spent the end of each session writing about what we had talked about in the form of a letter from me to him, where I positioned myself as a witness on his journey from isolation to belonging. He contacted me some years later. He was distraught. He thought his box of letters had been stolen and these were some of his most precious belongings. Epston (1994) suggests that one letter can be as effective as three therapeutic sessions. Denborough (2002) makes use of song as a way of witnessing and building different identities. He used this on one occasion with a man in prison, for whom a written letter would have not been helpful as he had limited skills in writing and reading. We frequently use a flip-chart to mark our journey on. I particularly like working this way with pictures that we can build up. I find pictures and symbols capture size and space and the position of a person in relation to a problem. It graphically positions the therapeutic alliance, working together on a problem that is externalised on a board. Outsider witnessing (White, 2007, p. 165), what was earlier called reflecting teams (Anderson, 1987), is another way of forming a marker on a map. It involves the re-telling of possible stories before an audience of carefully chosen outsider witnesses. This helps to shape different identities and thicken new stories. This practice evolved from an earlier idea of what Peggy Papp (1980) called a ‘Greek Chorus’, or ‘gossiping in the presence of’. The importance of an outsider witness group is that the group hold a conversation in front of, but not including, the client. The group focuses on their own experience of the conversation and what they might have learnt from the client and how this relates to themselves. It becomes a parallel knitting together of experiences that are not coming from a top-down or expert position. Celebrations can be used or certificates for young people. Re-membering is another way of developing an alternate story and its influence over the problem story. An example of this could be working together to choose others who support the person in the face of the problem. The metaphor often used is of a team who plays together. These become support groups for alternate stories that are supported in community action. 2 A background history Narrative Therapy straddles a time in history that has been moving from a modernist worldview towards a post-modern perspective in which identity is more fluid and constantly changing, depending on the context and time in history we find ourselves in. This post-modern view shapes our perceptions of life (Burr, 2003; Hart, 1995). The first wave of the movement began in the 1960’s. Groups in North America, including social anthropologists, social scientists, human biologists, social workers and psychiatrists, began to move away from models of psychopathology that had influenced psychology over the previous hundred years, and explore some of the ideas emerging in the social sciences. What they all had in common was an interest in the human species and how it evolves and changes within its larger environment. This was a very different ground to be exploring in the dominant climate of psychology. It turned away from intrapsychic psychology that had been using metaphors that focused on the health and medical diagnosis of an individual person, towards how people function in groups and what helps them change and evolve. It shifted the thinking away from understanding a person as broken or in need of fixing, to an evolutionary idea of adapting and changing to possibilities that might otherwise not have been imagined. The movement began looking at families in a more holistic way, where the individual was part of a much larger system that functioned within certain rules and conventions. This gave rise to systemic family therapy (White & Epston, 1990, Freedman & Combs 1986) In this first wave of systemic thinking, problems were understood as a symptom of family functioning. Post-war metaphors were used, borrowed from cybernetics, in which families were normalised as closed systems of homeostasis (as in a Central Heating system). The metaphors shifted and changed with the times, embracing communication theories, function and dysfunction. These were all machine-like metaphors that were, and still are, used. The movement was influenced by social constructivism, particularly the work of Maturana and Varela who explored the biology of perception and cognition of the nervous system as it feels its way towards safety (Freedman & Combs, 1996, p. 26). The second wave in family therapy took many of its metaphors from literary criticism and the arts embedded in postmodernist thinking (Lowe, 1990). These movements challenged some of the earlier assumptions around families as closed systems or feedback loops. It continued to evolve towards the next wave of family therapy where power, gender and inequality were taken seriously. 2.1 Birthing of Narrative Therapy as a Social Construction of Reality These earlier movements gave rise to Narrative Therapy, which moved away from understanding families as systems. The boundaries between the self and other, expert and patient began to dissolve and Narrative Therapy as we know it today was birthed by Michael White in Australia and David Epston in New Zealand. They brought out a book called Narrative means to therapeutic ends (White & Epston, 1990). They challenged power within a therapeutic relationship and asked awkward questions such as ‘whose knowledge is this and who benefits from this knowledge?’ Together they birthed a therapeutic model. They deconstructed language in a way that was empowering to those who came to consult with them. Their careful use of language was a constant deconstruction of some of the taken-for-granted assumptions, selecting words that did not pathologize. They articulated, in the therapeutic world, much of the philosophy at a time, a time where certainty was in the dock and truth was being cross-examined. It was a heady era in philosophy where words in the poststructuralist and social constructionist movements were not understood as having any hidden meaning of truth but were contextual. They traced how meanings and metaphors were used over history in order to make sense of the world we live in. They were inspired by the writing of Michel Foucault (1970, 1072, 1980). Foucault systematically unpacked the assumed truths of each age and showed how certain experiences have become enshrined and given the status of truth. Building on this, Narrative Therapy began to challenge the idea of a singular description of a person in favour of multiple stories that evolve over time, opening space for the possibility of other selves and other possible stories. This introduced an epistemological shift in the way we see and understand the world, moving from modernist notions where reality and facts are knowable, towards understanding life as a social construction of reality. Parry and Doan (1994, p. 1) say “Once upon a time, everything was understood through stories. Stories were always called upon to make things understandable… The answers they gave did not have to be literally true; they only had to satisfy people’s curiosity by providing an answer, less for the mind than for the soul”. It is the meaningfulness of the answers given rather than their factual truthfulness that gives beliefs credibility. In a therapeutic sense, this can mean that people get trapped and labelled within dominant beliefs until new meanings emerge from parts of a story that were not previously considered important, opening space for the possible to emerge. The psychological fabric of what we call reality therefore arises through interaction over time, as people together construct their realities and find meaning (Freedman & Combs, 1996, p. 23). Some years ago, when visiting Botswana, I was reading a book about the bushmen/San of the Kalahari Desert. They consistently raised four children. The explanation was simple. Four was a sustainable number for the group. They had a ritual that any subsequent baby was taken into the desert by the mother and the mother returned empty-handed. This creates an evolving set of meanings created in social interaction and within a particular social context, that help a group survive. 2.2 Deconstructing the textDerrida’s work on deconstruction influenced and helped to craft how language is used in the movement. Words assume socially sanctioned meanings that form our thinking and constitute our world (Anderson & Goolishian, 1988; Foucault, 1970; Burr, 2003). Take the word God for example. There is a dominant construction, which is not said but implied: that of a male patriarch who lives in a separate domain. This word has changed and evolved to favour words like ‘the divine’, which embraces a more Eastern texture of global wisdom, creating more space and collapsing the boundary between God and me. Derrida pointed the way to understanding that what is not written is as important as what is written; what is said always stands in relationship to what is not said. Narrative Therapy explored this by asking questions that find out what lies between the lines of dominant texts, what is not said but assumed. This is what Bruner, Vygotsky and Derrida had called ‘the absent but implicit’. New possibilities emerge when space is created for the absent to find language. Deconstruction is used in Narrative Therapy to formulate questions that challenge the taken-for-granted assumptions in order to find a way through the problem. White refers to this a ‘re-authoring’ of stories. Dominant pathologizing stories are overtaken by other preferred life-giving stories that were not previously considered of importance. These emerging possibilities are then developed. A person’s accountability to their actions and the effects of their actions is equally included in the deconstruction of the text. 3 Deconstructive questions I have given some examples of deconstruction in action. Questions such as ‘how did you come to believe this about yourself’? or ‘what was shyness trying to do to you?’. ‘Was there a time when this negative belief about yourself was not true and you stood up to passive-aggression?’. Other deconstructive questions that begin to build up alternate descriptions of the map might be ‘Who else knows this about you?’. All of these questions challenge the pathology of identity and assume that a person is so much more than their problems, opening space for an ever-evolving process of the possible to emerge. Deconstructive questions unpack some of the assumptions around which, for example, a pathology survives. Morgan (2000, p. 45) writes, “Anorexia and bulimia nevosa can only survive in cultures that value thinness, where success and competence are judged in terms of body shape and size and in cultures which promote self-suveillance and individualism”. By challenging such dominant beliefs that are enshrined in the pathology of Western societies, we open space for different possibilities to emerge, possibilities that move away from the individual and critique the very fabric of society, making Narrative Therapy a political act of resistance. Conclusion Narrative Therapy takes a critical stance toward taken-for-granted knowledge and assumptions of our Age. This in turn influences how we position ourselves within a therapeutic relationship. It cannot avoid challenging the politics of power and privilege. It understands how violent and reductive language is and how those on the margins become labelled by power. It uses language to explore, challenge, explode and engage the multiple meanings and contradictions that form our identities. (Hess, 2006). Narrative Therapy opens space for new possibilities of overlooked stories that are waiting to be told. It does this by critiquing dominant top-down knowledge and opening the conversation for alternate knowledge and interpretations to happen. It is a form of investigative journalism, constantly curious about what has not yet been said. This moves from words such as ‘expert’, ‘diagnosis’ and ‘patient’ towards a deep collaboration of shared knowledge and power within a community of ‘knowing’. It draws attention to both culture and history and explores people as socially constructed beings who make sense of their world at a certain age and time in history. In this way, it moves away from intrapsychic ideas of the individual autonomous ‘self’ towards identity as being a multi-storied affair of life-giving possible identities yet to be imagined. References Anderson, T. (1987). The reflecting team. Dialogue and meta-dialogue in clinical work. Family Process, 26, 415-428 Anderson, H., & Goolishian, H. (1988). Human systems as linguistic systems; preliminary and evolving ideas about the implications for clinical theory. Family Process, 27, 371-393 Beaudoin, M. & Zimmerman, J. (2011). Narrative therapy and interpersonal neurobiology: revisiting classic practices, developing new emphases. Journal of Systemic Therapies, Vol. 30 (1), 1-13. Burr, V. (2003). Social constructionism. London: Routledge Denborough, D. (2002). Community song writing and narrative practice. Clinical Psychology (UK), 17. September Epston, D. (1994). Extending the conversation. Family Therapy Networker 18 (6): 31-37 Foucault, M. (1970). The Order of discourse. Inaugural lecture at the college de France, given 2nd December 1970. In Young, R (Ed) 1981. Untying the text; A post-structural genaeology. Boston, MA: Routledge & Kegan Paul Foucault, M. (1972). Archaeology of knowledge. Tavistok Publications. London Routledge. Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: selected interviews and other writings. Pantheon, New York Foucault, M. (1988). “Practicing criticism, or, is it really important to think?”, interview by Didier Eribon, May 30-31, 1981, in Politics, Philosophy, Culture, ed. L. Kriztman (1988), p. 155 Freedman, J. and Combs, G. (1986). Narrative Therapy. The social construction of preferred realities. WW Norton New York Geertz, Clifford. (1973) "Thick Description: Toward an Interpretative Theory of Culture." In The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. Hart, B. (1997). Re-authoring the stories we work by: situating the narrative approach in the presence of the family of therapists Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family therapy vol 16 no 4 Hess, S.B. (2006). A pastoral response to some of the challenges of reconciliation in South Africa following on from the Truth and Reconciliation commission. Doctoral Thesis University of South Africa Lowe, B. (1991). Postmodern Themes and Therapeutic Practices: Notes Towards the Definition of ‘Family Therapy’. Dulwich Centre Newsletter 1991 no 3 p 41 Morgan, A. (2000). What is narrative therapy? An easy-to-read introduction. Dulwich Centre Publications Adelaide. Papp, P. (1980). The Greek chorus and other techniques of paradoxical therapy. Family Process March vol 19, 45-57 Parry, A. & Doan, R. (1994). Story re-visions. Narrative therapy in the postmodern world. Guilford press Walther, S. & Carey, M. (2009). Narrative Therapy difference and possibility. Inviting New becomings. Context October 2009 6-10 White, M. (1984). Pseudoencropresis, from avolanche to victory from vicsious to virtuous cycles. Family Systems Medicine, 2, 150-160 White, M. (1986). Negative explanation, restraint and double description: A template for family therapy. Family process. June. White, M & Epston, D. (1990). Narrative means to therapeutic ends. New York: Norton White, M. (2000). Reflections on Narrative Practice. Essays and interviews. Dulwich Centre Publications Adelaide Australia. White, M. (2007). Maps of narrative practice. WW Norton |
THE STORIES WE TELL OURSELVES - workshop notes
Narrative therapy as you might guess has to do with life stories.
Stories give us meaning and identity and are never told in isolation to other stories or people. In other words stories always involve a plethora of characters. Stories also can change over time - especially when we give them different meanings.
All through history we have known who we are through the stories we tell about ourselves and others.
Modern science however has moved away from this more 'metaphorical' language towards greater scientific precision. In doing so we have often lost the thread of meanings that connect us as human beings.
Narrative Therapy helps return us to the stories.
We have:
This is important because it challenges the notion of the individual isolated self.
We make sense of our stories as we plot them in sequence over time. In other words, over time we gather up all the evidence we need to sustain our own stories, whether they are personal or cultural, helpful or not helpful, life-giving or life-taking.
A story can be helpful at one point in our life but redundant later on. An example of this in my life is 'dyslexia'... As a child I could not spell or write and I lived with a fear of this, believing myself to be 'stupid'. Eventually I found solace in the story of 'dyslexia'.....as it challenged this awful belief in 'stupid'. Many years later however I learnt to work on a computer with a spell check.... and the story of dyslexia became virtually redundant. Stupid along with dyslexia will always be in the archives of the stories I tell about myself but I choose no longer to be defined by them.
It is important not to become stuck in old stories.
Stories also hold a moral code about what is acceptable in a particular moment in history. For example, a single mother giving birth in the West just fifty years ago would have been judged as 'wayward'. Today the story has changed. We are left wondering 'what then is the truth?' This is a challenging question. The Greeks thought they could distill 'truth' but the Hebraic way of living was a story-line way - in which truth is that which becomes life-giving to a community.
We all play roles in these stories. This is also important as we need to know what we stand for and what we believe in for the good of ourselves and others.
However, this can become a problem either for an individual or a nation when we get trapped on the wrong side of the story and scripted as a vilain etc...By setting up group stories of so called 'truth' we have destroyed whole nations and it still goes on. Narrative Therapy is constantly aware of this dynamic by asking questions that invite responsibility.
Stories are therefore embroiled in 'power relationships' and this is important because some people are permitted more voice than others and more truth than others. 'Experts' seem to know more about us than we know about ourselves!
We have many stories about our lives and some of these stories become 'dominant' or privileged stories over other stories.
We are scripted into a story and given the script to perform on the stage of life within the culture in which we are living at the time.
We can change these stories but it is hard to change it on our own. We can however become the co-authors of our own scripts or our preferred stories.
I say co-authors because it is about working together to build up new stories, using witnesses, conversations and relationships with others to 'thicken a new plot'. Narrative Therapy in this way challenges individualism and some of the taken-for-granted truths that have become dominant ways of knowing.
Narrative Therapy has moved away from the question 'who am I in this world?'. It believes that we are many people within one person. It has moved into the territory of interrogating and exploring the context in which stories and truths get to be told and believed. In this way it seeks to free people from the labels that are worn with shame.
Example
There is a dominant story about me as a child; it goes like this:-
' Bridgid is a sweet child, she is kind and generous and is always the one to give in to others and make the peace'.
When I was a child this story began to 'live me'. My parents told me this, others told me this..... The 'good story' however also became a problem story. I often gave my toys away; I would not stand up for myself and from a young age this good and kind character silenced other stories that might otherwise have been valid stories. It also brought problems - in that I enrolled lying to help me maintain the 'good story'. At other times rage would take me over and I would throw up a board game and be told 'But this isn't like YOU Bridgid - where is the good and kind Bridgid who you really are?'.
I was trapped into ONE story about myself that seemed to define who I was. This dominant story became a problem for me in life. I began to withdraw and live in a fantasy world as I could not live up to this story. This could easily be seen as a pathology of developmental deficit within myself, or parents who did not listen carefully, ending in 'mother blaming'. I began to stop performing well at school and in today's world I might have been told I was ADD. I spent lots of time helping others but not myself. This might also be diagnosed as living in my 'false self' or 'poor object relationship' or 'projecting onto others'. These might be helpful labels and I too find them helpful in my life and am informed by these psychologies. Narrative Therapy however digs in different soil.
Narrative Therapy challenges this notion of the single individual true self. It asks the very challenging question: 'On what assumption is this story based?' Who benefits from this story?
An exercise in exploring a dominant problem story (adapted from Story Re-Visions by Parry and Doan)
Cindy is in her late 20’s and is studying for a Master’s degree. She is working her way through a divorce. She says that her reason for coming for therapy is ‘I want to get rid of my ole baggage from the past so that I can get on with my life’.
Cindy describes her situations as impossible as her parents have so many expectations from her. The expectations are not ‘said’ as much as ‘experienced’. She never feels that she measures up, however hard she tries to please them. She feels as if she is a ‘ deviant’. She has tried standing up for herself, like getting a divorce and not running back to her parents when things get difficult. She has declared her independence, but still finds herself running back to her parents for financial support. Her parents offer her ‘advice’ which she hates, especially as she feels as if she is a ‘child’ again. She decided to prove her responsibility by doing everything ‘perfectly’ – but this has led to impossible pressure on her. It just seems like an old story keeps repeating itself. Her recent divorce, which was not compatible with perfectionism at all, seemed to add fuel to her desire to change but just made her feel even more guilty.
1. What are the larger themes in this story – ie belief systems that are experienced but not necessarily talked about?
2. What are the ‘labels’ she has used about herself and others?
3. What meaning does she make of this dominant problem story?
4. How might you be able to use externalizing language to separate her and her family from these labels?
5. Whose voices are heard in this dominant problem saturated story?
6. If you were Cindy how might you define ‘the problem?’ as separate from yourself?
Narrative therapy as you might guess has to do with life stories.
Stories give us meaning and identity and are never told in isolation to other stories or people. In other words stories always involve a plethora of characters. Stories also can change over time - especially when we give them different meanings.
All through history we have known who we are through the stories we tell about ourselves and others.
Modern science however has moved away from this more 'metaphorical' language towards greater scientific precision. In doing so we have often lost the thread of meanings that connect us as human beings.
Narrative Therapy helps return us to the stories.
We have:
- individual stories,
- family stories,
- heroic group stories,
- Sacred stories.
- Sacred stories.
- heroic group stories,
- family stories,
This is important because it challenges the notion of the individual isolated self.
We make sense of our stories as we plot them in sequence over time. In other words, over time we gather up all the evidence we need to sustain our own stories, whether they are personal or cultural, helpful or not helpful, life-giving or life-taking.
A story can be helpful at one point in our life but redundant later on. An example of this in my life is 'dyslexia'... As a child I could not spell or write and I lived with a fear of this, believing myself to be 'stupid'. Eventually I found solace in the story of 'dyslexia'.....as it challenged this awful belief in 'stupid'. Many years later however I learnt to work on a computer with a spell check.... and the story of dyslexia became virtually redundant. Stupid along with dyslexia will always be in the archives of the stories I tell about myself but I choose no longer to be defined by them.
It is important not to become stuck in old stories.
Stories also hold a moral code about what is acceptable in a particular moment in history. For example, a single mother giving birth in the West just fifty years ago would have been judged as 'wayward'. Today the story has changed. We are left wondering 'what then is the truth?' This is a challenging question. The Greeks thought they could distill 'truth' but the Hebraic way of living was a story-line way - in which truth is that which becomes life-giving to a community.
We all play roles in these stories. This is also important as we need to know what we stand for and what we believe in for the good of ourselves and others.
However, this can become a problem either for an individual or a nation when we get trapped on the wrong side of the story and scripted as a vilain etc...By setting up group stories of so called 'truth' we have destroyed whole nations and it still goes on. Narrative Therapy is constantly aware of this dynamic by asking questions that invite responsibility.
Stories are therefore embroiled in 'power relationships' and this is important because some people are permitted more voice than others and more truth than others. 'Experts' seem to know more about us than we know about ourselves!
We have many stories about our lives and some of these stories become 'dominant' or privileged stories over other stories.
We are scripted into a story and given the script to perform on the stage of life within the culture in which we are living at the time.
We can change these stories but it is hard to change it on our own. We can however become the co-authors of our own scripts or our preferred stories.
I say co-authors because it is about working together to build up new stories, using witnesses, conversations and relationships with others to 'thicken a new plot'. Narrative Therapy in this way challenges individualism and some of the taken-for-granted truths that have become dominant ways of knowing.
Narrative Therapy has moved away from the question 'who am I in this world?'. It believes that we are many people within one person. It has moved into the territory of interrogating and exploring the context in which stories and truths get to be told and believed. In this way it seeks to free people from the labels that are worn with shame.
Example
There is a dominant story about me as a child; it goes like this:-
' Bridgid is a sweet child, she is kind and generous and is always the one to give in to others and make the peace'.
When I was a child this story began to 'live me'. My parents told me this, others told me this..... The 'good story' however also became a problem story. I often gave my toys away; I would not stand up for myself and from a young age this good and kind character silenced other stories that might otherwise have been valid stories. It also brought problems - in that I enrolled lying to help me maintain the 'good story'. At other times rage would take me over and I would throw up a board game and be told 'But this isn't like YOU Bridgid - where is the good and kind Bridgid who you really are?'.
I was trapped into ONE story about myself that seemed to define who I was. This dominant story became a problem for me in life. I began to withdraw and live in a fantasy world as I could not live up to this story. This could easily be seen as a pathology of developmental deficit within myself, or parents who did not listen carefully, ending in 'mother blaming'. I began to stop performing well at school and in today's world I might have been told I was ADD. I spent lots of time helping others but not myself. This might also be diagnosed as living in my 'false self' or 'poor object relationship' or 'projecting onto others'. These might be helpful labels and I too find them helpful in my life and am informed by these psychologies. Narrative Therapy however digs in different soil.
Narrative Therapy challenges this notion of the single individual true self. It asks the very challenging question: 'On what assumption is this story based?' Who benefits from this story?
- SEPARATING THE PROBLEM FROM THE PERSON
The first thing we do in narrative therapy is to separate the problem story from the person.
Although goodness and kindness had lived with me, they had trapped me. This assumes that Bridgid is NOT the problem, rather goodness and kindness have become a problem and that day-dreaming and lying had piggy-backed on the problem. They had ganged up with goodness and kindness and taken Bridgid over. Of course goodness and kindness are neither good nor bad, right nor wrong... it is about the way they took me over and silenced me.
Narrative Therapy uses language to help separate the person from the problem.....
Bridgid is good and kind.................. changes to 'goodness and kindness have had a long relationship with Bridgid'.
By doing this the person is able to look at the problem as separate from themselves.
Traditionally Psychology has looked at a problem as a broken part of an individual, or a pathology that needs fixing.
Narrative Therapy takes a different position as it assumes that we all face problems and sometimes get stuck inside the role of the problem story. This is not to say that other forms of therapy are not helpful.
Some topical examples:-
'He is a terrorist'........... turns into 'He has got involved with violence'
'She is schizophrenic'.......... turns into 'She is facing some frightening thoughts'
'He is ADD'....... turns into 'he is with losing attention at times'
'She is alcoholic'.... turns into 'Alcohol seems to be destroying her life'
'He is depressed'........ turns into 'Depression has picked on him'
'He's a really bad kid.... turns into 'Trouble is really following that kid around'
The problem takes on a role of its own as separate from the individual.
In all these examples the person is not the problem... it is the problem that is the problem
An example of a conversation that separates a person from a problem . (adapted from Alice Morgan's book What is narrative therapy?)
Eileigh is an 8yr old child who came for counseling because she felt stupid and had been diagnosed with ADD. She also felt excluded and generally lacked energy. Her mother found it difficult to get her up in the morning and lately she had been telling her lies about her homework. The conversation enters after she has told us this story.
Bridgid: What do these words like stupid, and ADD tell you about yourself?
Eileigh: They tell me that I am not good enough and not a nice person
Bridgid: What do these things do to you… I mean what happens when stupid gets its way?
Eileigh: It makes me give up trying.
Bridgid: So what does it tell you?
Eileigh: It says ‘you can’t do that… its much too hard… there’s no point in even starting ‘cos you won’t be able to do I t.
Bridgid: How does it say that? I mean does it have a special kind of a voice or a way of speaking?
Eileigh: It is kind of in my head
Bridgid: Is it loud in your head or just quiet?
Eileigh: It is mean, like the boys who are mean to me at school and calls me names
Bridgid: Does it go anywhere else in your body or just stay in your head… like does it go to your heart
Eileigh: Sure – it makes my heart tick fast and then it makes me afraid
Bridgid: So it is a pretty mean kind of voice to persuade your head and gang up with your heart against you…… Is there a name you would want to give this problem?
Eileigh: mmmmm I think I might call it ‘Meanie’.
Bridgid: Does Meanie always speak meanly to you?
Eileigh: Always… It never says anything nice – just things like ‘you are dumb or you are stupid.
Bridgid: When Meanie speaks…. Does it speak all the time or just some of the time?
Eileigh: Mostly when I get my work from the teacher.......
An exercise in exploring a dominant problem story (adapted from Story Re-Visions by Parry and Doan)
Cindy is in her late 20’s and is studying for a Master’s degree. She is working her way through a divorce. She says that her reason for coming for therapy is ‘I want to get rid of my ole baggage from the past so that I can get on with my life’.
Cindy describes her situations as impossible as her parents have so many expectations from her. The expectations are not ‘said’ as much as ‘experienced’. She never feels that she measures up, however hard she tries to please them. She feels as if she is a ‘ deviant’. She has tried standing up for herself, like getting a divorce and not running back to her parents when things get difficult. She has declared her independence, but still finds herself running back to her parents for financial support. Her parents offer her ‘advice’ which she hates, especially as she feels as if she is a ‘child’ again. She decided to prove her responsibility by doing everything ‘perfectly’ – but this has led to impossible pressure on her. It just seems like an old story keeps repeating itself. Her recent divorce, which was not compatible with perfectionism at all, seemed to add fuel to her desire to change but just made her feel even more guilty.
1. What are the larger themes in this story – ie belief systems that are experienced but not necessarily talked about?
2. What are the ‘labels’ she has used about herself and others?
3. What meaning does she make of this dominant problem story?
4. How might you be able to use externalizing language to separate her and her family from these labels?
5. Whose voices are heard in this dominant problem saturated story?
6. If you were Cindy how might you define ‘the problem?’ as separate from yourself?
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