narrative therapy

Narrative therapy was developed during the 1970s and 1980s, largely by Australian social worker Michael White and David Epston of New Zealand,{{cite book |last1=White |first1=Michael |author-link1=Michael White (psychotherapist) |last2=Epston |first2=David |date=1990 |title=Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends |location=New York |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |isbn=0393700984 |oclc=20828023}}{{cite book |last=Payne |first=Martin |date=2015 |chapter=Narrative therapy |editor-last=Nelson-Jones |editor-first=Richard |title=Nelson-Jones' Theory and Practice of Counselling and Psychotherapy |edition=6th |location=Los Angeles |publisher=SAGE Publications |pages=360–382 |isbn=9781446295564 |oclc=897445861}} and it was influenced by different philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists such as Michel Foucault,{{cite journal |last1=Combs |first1=Gene |last2=Freedman |first2=Jill |date=October 2012 |title=Narrative, poststructuralism, and social justice: current practices in narrative therapy |journal=The Counseling Psychologist |language=en |volume=40 |issue=7 |pages=1033–1060 |doi=10.1177/0011000012460662 |s2cid=145432322 |issn=0011-0000}} Jerome Bruner,{{Cite book|last=White|first=Michael|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/961218406|title=Narrative therapy classics|date=2016|isbn=978-0-9752180-8-2|location=Adelaide, South Australia|oclc=961218406}} Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky{{Cite book|last=Kingsley)|first=White, Michael (Michael|url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/70782282|title=Narrative therapy with children and their families|date=2006|publisher=Dulwich Centre Publications|isbn=0-9752180-2-6|oclc=70782282}} etc.

{{more citations needed section|date=November 2022}}

The narrative therapist focuses upon assisting people to create stories about themselves, about their identities, that are helpful to them.{{cite book | last1=Angus | first1=Lynne E. | last2=McLeod | first2=John | title=The handbook of narrative and psychotherapy : practice, theory, and research | publisher=SAGE Publications | publication-place=Thousand Oaks, Calif. | date=2004 | isbn=0-7619-2684-4 | oclc=52766323 | page=60 | quote=The socially authored plots adapted to the local circumstances of individuals are termed dominant stories. Overcoming the dominant story: therapist works with the person to deconstruct his or her dominant plot. The first step in overcoming an internalized, culturally imposed self-story is to bring the story to awareness.}} This work of "re-authoring identity" helps people identify their values and identify the skills and knowledge to live out these values by way of the therapist's skilled use of listening and questioning.{{cite journal |last1=Bavelas |first1=Janet B. |last2=Coates |first2=Linda |last3=Johnson |first3=Trudy |date=December 2000 |title=Listeners as co-narrators |journal=Journal of Personality and Social Psychology |volume=79 |issue=6 |pages=941–952 |pmid=11138763 |doi=10.1037/0022-3514.79.6.941|s2cid=39770808 }} Through the process of identifying the history of values in people's lives, the therapist and client are able to co-author a new story about the person.{{cite book |editor1-last=Brown |editor1-first=Catrina |editor2-last=Augusta-Scott |editor2-first=Tod |date=2007 |title=Narrative Therapy: Making Meaning, Making Lives |location=Thousand Oaks, CA |publisher=SAGE Publications |isbn=978-1412909877 |oclc=64688794}}{{rp|24}}

The story people tell about themselves and that is told about them is important in this approach, which asserts that the story of a person's identity may determine what they think is possible for themselves. The narrative process allows people to identify what values are important to them and how they might use their own skills and knowledge to live these values.{{rp|36}}

Narrative therapy focuses on "unique outcomes" (a term of Erving Goffman), or moments that contradict a client's personal "problem-saturated" narrative. Unique outcomes work by revealing a person's strengths, agency, and emotional vitality that are hidden behind a person's personal problem-focused narratives. Unique outcomes can help to reveal entryways to more positive alternative narratives that clients are encouraged to adapt.{{Cite journal |last1=Draucker |first1=Claire Burke |last2=Smith |first2=Carolyn |last3=Mazurczyk |first3=Jill |last4=Thomas |first4=Destini |last5=Ramirez |first5=Patricia |last6=McNealy |first6=Kim |last7=Thomas |first7=Jade |last8=Martsolf |first8=Donna S. |date=March 2016 |title=Unique Outcomes in the Narratives of Young Adults Who Experienced Dating Violence as Adolescents |url=https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1078390315621062 |journal=Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association |language=en |volume=22 |issue=2 |pages=112–121 |doi=10.1177/1078390315621062 |pmid=27000183 |issn=1078-3903}}

The concept of identity is important in narrative therapy. The approach aims not to conflate people's identities with the problems they may face or the mistakes they have made. Rather, the approach seeks to avoid modernist, essentialist notions of the self that lead people to believe there is a biologically determined "true self" or "true nature". Instead, identity, seen as primarily social, can be changed according to the choices people make.{{cite book |last=White |first=Michael |author-link=Michael White (psychotherapist) |date=2007 |title=Maps of Narrative Practice |location=New York |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |page=139 |isbn=9780393705164 |oclc=76792066}}{{Page needed|date=October 2020}}

To separate people's identities from the problems they face, narrative therapy employs {{em|externalizing}} conversations. The process of externalization allows people to consider their relationships with problems. Narrative therapy allows people to become separated from their "internalized" understandings or ideas of a problem by looking at the problem from a social context, engaging in the construction and performance of preferred identities, and externalizing a person's strengths or positive attributes.{{Cite journal |last1=Jagatdeb |first1=Soumya |last2=Mishra |first2=Sanjana |last3=Bajpai |first3=Thwisha |last4=Sen |first4=Shelja |date=April 2024 |title="Externalizing the Internalized:" Exploring Externalizing Conversations in Narrative Therapy with Adolescents and Young Adults in the Indian Context |journal=Journal of Indian Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health |language=en |volume=20 |issue=2 |pages=153–160 |doi=10.1177/09731342241238096 |issn=0973-1342|doi-access=free }}

An {{em|externalizing}} emphasis involves naming a problem so that a person can assess the problem's effects in their life, can analyze how the problem operates or works in their life, and in the end can choose their relationship to the problem.

In a narrative approach, the therapist aims to adopt a collaborative therapeutic posture rather than imposing ideas on people by giving them advice. Michael White developed a conversation map called a "Statement of Position Map" designed to elicit the client's own evaluation of the problems and developments in their lives. Both the therapist and the client are seen as having valuable information relevant to the process and the content of the therapeutic conversation. By adopting a posture of curiosity and collaboration, the therapist aims to give the implicit message to people that they already have knowledge and skills to solve the problems they face. When people develop solutions to their own problems on the basis of their own values, they may become much more committed to implementing these solutions.{{cite book |last=White |first=Michael |author-link=Michael White (psychotherapist) |date=1995 |title=Re-Authoring Lives: Interviews & Essays |location=Adelaide |publisher=Dulwich Centre Publications |page=39 |isbn=9780646227351 |oclc=34403483}}

Narrative therapy identifies that identities are social achievements and the practice of re-membering draws closer those who support a person's preferred story about themselves and dis-engages those that do not support the person.{{Clarify|date=October 2020}}{{Citation needed|date=October 2020}}

The concept of "absent but implicit" refers to the discernment people must make between their expressed experiences and other experiences that they had in the past and already assigned meaning to. The concept of "absent but implicit" is used to discover stories of oneself that lies underneath the problem narrative being provided. {{Cite journal |last1=CAREY |first1=MAGGIE |last2=WALTHER |first2=SARAH |last3=RUSSELL |first3=SHONA |date=2009-08-10 |title=The Absent but Implicit: A Map to Support Therapeutic Enquiry |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1545-5300.2009.01285.x |journal=Family Process |volume=48 |issue=3 |pages=319–331 |doi=10.1111/j.1545-5300.2009.01285.x |pmid=19702920 |issn=0014-7370}} Inspired by the work of Jacques Derrida, Michael White became curious about the values implicit in people's pain, their sense of failure, and actions.{{Citation needed|date=October 2020}} Often, people only feel pain or failure in when their values are abridged, or when their relationships and lives are not as they should be. Furthermore, there are often stalled initiatives that people take in life that are also guided by implicit values.

In this particular narrative practice, people will meet, listen, and respond to the preferred accounts of other's lives. This is referred to as "outsider witness practice" in narrative therapy. {{Cite journal |last1=Walther |first1=Sarah |last2=Fox |first2=Hugh |date=2012 |title=Narrative therapy and outsider witness practice: Teachers as a community of acknowledgement |url=https://explore.bps.org.uk/lookup/doi/10.53841/bpsecp.2012.29.2.10 |journal=Educational and Child Psychology |language=en |volume=29 |issue=2 |pages=10–19 |doi=10.53841/bpsecp.2012.29.2.10 |issn=0267-1611}} Often they are friends of the consulting person or past clients of the therapist who have their own knowledge and experience of the problem at hand. During the first interview, between therapist and consulting person, the outsider listens without comment.

Then the therapist interviews them with the instructions not to critique or evaluate or make a proclamation about what they have just heard, but instead to simply say what phrase or image stood out for them, followed by any resonances between their life struggles and those just witnessed. Lastly, the outsider is asked in what ways they may feel a shift in how they experience themselves from when they first entered the room.{{cite book |last=White |first=Michael |author-link=Michael White (psychotherapist) |date=2004 |title=Narrative Practice and Exotic Lives: Resurrecting Diversity in Everyday Life |location=Adelaide |publisher=Dulwich Centre Publications |page=15 |isbn=9780957792999 |oclc=60583048}}

Next, in similar fashion, the therapist turns to the consulting person, who has been listening all the while, and interviews them about what images or phrases stood out in the conversation just heard and what resonances have struck a chord within them.

In the end, an outsider witness conversation is often rewarding for witnesses. But for the consulting person the outcomes are remarkable: they learn they are not the only one with this problem, and they acquire new images and knowledge about it and their chosen alternate direction in life. The main aim of narrative therapy is to help clients to create new, positive stories that they can use to re-author their lives. {{Cite journal |last=Robson |first=Maggie |date=February 2008 |title=The driver whose heart was full of sand: Leigh's story – a play therapy case study of a bereaved child |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03069880701715663 |journal=British Journal of Guidance & Counselling |volume=36 |issue=1 |pages=71–80 |doi=10.1080/03069880701715663 |issn=0306-9885}} Narrative therapy helps to separate and externalize people's problems so they can become empowered and retake control of their lives in a positive, meaningful ways.

Narrative therapy embodies a strong appreciation for the creation and use of documents, as when a person and a counsellor co-author "A Graduation from the Blues Certificate", for example.{{cite book |last=Payne |first=Martin |date=2006 |title=Narrative Therapy: An Introduction for Counsellors |edition=2nd |location=London; Thousand Oaks |publisher=SAGE Publications |page=106 |isbn=9781412920124 |oclc=62178252 |doi=10.4135/9781446213322}} In some instances, case notes are created collaboratively with clients to provide documentation as well as markers of progress.

A strong awareness of the impact of power relations in therapeutic conversations, with a commitment to checking back with the client about the effects of therapeutic styles in order to mitigate the possible negative effect of invisible assumptions or preferences held by the therapist.{{cite book |last=Madigan |first=Stephen |date=2019 |title=Narrative Therapy |edition=2nd |series=Theories of Psychotherapy Series |location=Washington, DC |publisher=American Psychological Association |page=81 |isbn=9781433829864 |oclc=1056201760 |doi=10.1037/0000131-000|s2cid=150822712 }} There is also an awareness of how social narratives such as femininity and masculinity can be corrupted and negatively influence peoples identities.{{rp|23–38}}

Narrative therapy has made numerous contributions to the field of eating disorders. David Epston, Stephen Madigan and Catrina Brown have made the most significant contribution to bringing a depathologizing approach to this issue.{{Page needed|date=October 2020}}

Narrative therapy has also been applied to work with men who abuse their female partners. Alan Jenkins and Tod Augusta-Scott have been the most prolific in this field. They integrated a social-political analysis of the violence, while at the same time engaging men in a respectful, collaborative manner.{{Page needed|date=October 2020}}{{cite book |editor1-last=Augusta-Scott |editor1-first=Tod |editor2-last=Scott |editor2-first=Katreena |editor3-last=Tutty |editor3-first=Leslie M. |date=2017 |title=Innovations in Interventions to Address Intimate Partner Violence: Research and Practice |location=New York |publisher=Routledge |isbn=9781138692268 |oclc=948558557 |doi=10.4324/9781315532776}}{{Page needed|date=October 2020}}

Narrative therapy has also been used in a variety of community settings. In particular, an exercise called "Tree of Life" has been used to mobilize communities to act according to their own values.{{cite book |last=Denborough |first=David |date=2014 |title=Retelling the Stories of Our Lives: Everyday Narrative Therapy to Draw Inspiration and Transform Experience |location=New York |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |pages=11–21 |isbn=9780393708158 |oclc=855507198}}

{{See also|Psychotherapy#General critiques}}

There have been several formal criticisms of narrative therapy over what are viewed as its theoretical and methodological inconsistencies, among various other concerns.{{cite journal |last=Fish |first=Vincent |date=July 1993 |title=Poststructuralism in family therapy: interrogating the narrative/conversatinal mode |journal=Journal of Marital and Family Therapy |volume=19 |issue=3 |pages=221–232 |doi=10.1111/j.1752-0606.1993.tb00983.x}}{{cite journal |last=Minuchin |first=Salvador |author-link=Salvador Minuchin |date=October 1998 |title=Where is the family in narrative family therapy? |journal=Journal of Marital and Family Therapy |volume=24 |issue=4 |pages=397–403 |pmid=9801999 |doi=10.1111/j.1752-0606.1998.tb01094.x}}{{cite journal |last=Madigan |first=Stephen |date=March 1996 |title=The politics of identity: considering community discourse in the externalizing of internalized problem conversations |journal=Journal of Systemic Therapies |volume=15 |issue=1 |pages=47–62 |doi=10.1521/jsyt.1996.15.1.47}}

• Narrative therapy has been criticised as holding to a social constructionist belief that there are no absolute truths, but only socially sanctioned points of view, and that Narrative therapists simply privilege their client's concerns over and above "dominating" cultural narratives.{{cite journal |last=Doan |first=Robert E. |date=Fall 1998 |title=The king is dead; long live the king: narrative therapy and practicing what we preach |journal=Family Process |volume=37 |issue=3 |pages=379–385 |pmid=9879006 |doi=10.1111/j.1545-5300.1998.00379.x}}
• Several critics have posed concerns that narrative therapy has made gurus of its leaders, particularly in the light that its leading proponents tend to be overly harsh about most other kinds of therapy.
• Narrative therapy is also criticized for the lack of clinical and empirical studies to validate its many claims.{{cite journal |last1=Etchison |first1=Mary |last2=Kleist |first2=David M. |date=January 2000 |title=Review of narrative therapy: research and utility |journal=The Family Journal |volume=8 |issue=1 |pages=61–66 |doi=10.1177/1066480700081009 |s2cid=143708204 |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/238335902}} Etchison & Kleist (2000) stated that narrative therapy's focus on {{em|qualitative}} outcomes is not congruent with larger {{em|quantitative}} research and findings which the majority of respected empirical studies employ today. This has led to a lack of research material which can support its claims of efficacy.

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Theoretical foundations

• Constructivist epistemology
• Feminism
• Hermeneutics
• Postmodernism
• Poststructuralism

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Related types of therapy

• Brief therapy
• Family therapy
• Logotherapy
• Response based therapy
• Script analysis
• Solution focused brief therapy

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Other related concepts

• Dialogical self
• Lucid dream
• Narrative

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{{Psychotherapy}}

{{Narrative}}

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Category:Constructivism (psychological school)

Category:Psychotherapy by type