Pi By —— ‘Tue Promise OF Narrative Fhuwermen ACCORDING TO AUSTRALIAN THERAPIST MICHAFL WHI a disconcerting effect of his new celebrity on the inter national therapy conference circuit is the recurrent Meticulous prospecting is the heart experience of getting off a plane, being met bya workshop sponsor and told something like, “We sure have a real of Michael humdinger of a family for your live consultation. Oh, and White's by the way, about 500 people have signed up to watt approach to narrative Whereupon White, the most visible representative of what therapy is loosely called the “narrative method” of therapy, is 7 plunked down in front of an impossible situ the audience waits breathlessly for a therapeutic miricle White, who finds the hoopla attached to his new status puzzling, denies that there is anything magical about what he does. He says he is just very “thorough.” very painstaking, and that “i's silly that people expect 10 get a good idea of this kind of work by setting me up in fone meeting with the most complex situations they cin find.” Then he adds, “Certainly, the idea that [ve gotall the angwers doesn't it the: spirit of the work” Nonetheless, over the past decade, \White has developed worldwide follow: ing of both senior therapists and neo- pphytes on several continents who insist hie has something vitally important to say that the field needs to hear. But it can hardly be his therapeutic style that explains his elevation to the ranks of the illuminati. Watching him in session is a far cry from seeing one of the recognized lions of clinical performance sweep grandly into the middle ofa dysfunctional family circle and in one session transform ft imo a ttle Kingaom of love and hharmony, while being wildly entertaining fn the process. Far from it His pace is measured, even monotonous —some find it maddeningly slow—the therapeutic persona respectful, solictous, inquisitive, Slightly donnish, almost deferential, the circuitous language an eccentric mix of the folksy and the politically correct. It {shard to imagine the following questions appearing in any psychotherapy textbook: “Do you know how you got recruited into these habits of thought that have been So capturing of your life?” "What skills have you developed as a couple that allowed you to hold on to your relation: ship in the face of adversity, and in spite of the polities of heterosexist dominance and ageism that marginalize your ways of being?” "What's it like for Anorexia "Nervosa, which has heen pulling the woo! (ver your eyes, 10 witness these recent, more positive developments in your hfe?” During sessions, White hunches down, in his chair over his notes—he seems almost to recede from view. He almost never asserts anything. rarely utters 3 declarative sentence, just patiently asks questions, hundreds of questions, often repeating back the answers and writing them down. Like an archacologist, White Sifts through the undiferentiated debs fof experience for minuscule traces of ‘meaning—the tiny, precious shards of struggle, defeat and victory that reveal 2 life—alt ‘the while doggedly taking notes, ‘een occasionally requesting the speaker to slow down so he can take it all in AL the same time, there is 4 startling tenacity about the process, a kind of polite but unshalable insistence on participa tion, a refusal to let people off the hook, even after hours an nf nom Fesponse—ong silences, emberassed shrugs, parrot like reiterations of “I don't none session, for example the parents of a deeply shy and isolated. pre adolescent girl. are trying to coux her away from her perch ie fost of the {elevision and go wathing with her father But the gies reluctance ssuch that even when she does consent, she dawdles $0 that her father sys he must then take a Second walk in order to get any exercise for himself. He is disheartened and wonders if the efforts worth it In this seyent, White tees to get a statement of feeling from the gel benef. es uphill ‘work: White asks, “Do you have different paces of walking? A snails pace? A tor foise’s pace... Are you Eater or slower ‘when you go walking wih your dad?” ‘AMter along pause, she mums, “Prob- ably slower” "Probably slower.” volleys White. “That means you do have more than one gear. [Do you walh more low] because you don't want t go walking wih him?” “I don't wane 0 do i” she sys nally Tgnoring this response he asks her how ‘she could help her dad work out what {0 do—abandon their walls together of persist She yawns hugely. Building on 3 tmicroscopically tiny advance in the gies ‘life emerging earlier in the session (when he had elicited from her a barely spoken acxnowleagement that she might lke (0 be “taking more initiative m Uf, rather than being a passenger") White asks, “What would you like to do with your dad that would it with this rew direction ot yours?"—a "new diction” that would have been invisible to anyore but White She mumbles “Go walking” "Going ‘walking —would that it this new direc tion?” he pushes. "Fis," she barely murmurs “Ie does fi” White continues enthusiastically, "So would you like hie to keep on trying to go walking, or would ‘you like him to stop?” “Hmmm, hmmm, Imm,” she replies. “You have to say ‘what you'd like,” says White—the closest hhe comes to making a demard. "Keep on walking” she finally answers. It i an achievement, says White, beause she has ‘etermined that the decision o keep on ‘walking “fits more with seifcae than self. neglect.” By the end of a liter session, ‘hile she does't exactly seem as “right open, chiepy, communicative, chatty” as ‘White suggests to ier se is dearly much (pore emgage, She Tks at im out of Be omer of here a ls sy ven produces some whe, neq eal answers (short ones) to Bis ques: ‘rarely even talked to anytody, has begun, hhowever hesitantly and timidly, to say out loud what she wants for her life, This kind of work may look to some [practitioners like cutting grass blade by blade, but it is probably more like panning for gold in an overworked stream long since abandoned by other prospectors ‘Slowly, meticulously, stexdfastly, White sifts through the sandy deposit, patiently extracting almost invisible lakes until, by imperceptible increments, he has amassed an astonishing mound of pre- cious metal. Clearly, Whie's reputation rests less on ‘bravura than on the extraoedinary ‘moments that occur in his practice—epiphanics that take place with people most ther: apists would write off as hopeless. Mary, a young woman horribly abused as a child, appears in White's office anorexic and bulimic to the point of near death, suicidal. actively hallucinating, tunable to leave her house or talk with anybody except her husband. Discharged from her last psychiatric hospital with the ‘medical prognosis of death by starvation ‘within a few seccks, she is brought in to therapy by Harry her despairing husband, and spends the session curled up ina fetal position, rocking to and feo on the floor inthe comer of White's offie. “She would Rot answer any questions, and I did not et 10 see her face for the first three sessions,” says White ‘When Mary does nat respond to his gentle, persistent probing, he asks her ‘husband to pose the questions to her, and when she still remains silent, White wonders aloud if Harry would like to “speculate” on what her answers might be. At the end of the third session, after fone of White's typical questions—what ‘did Harry think her answer might be if hie asked her how she had been recruited into such selfhatred—she moves 4 little and whispers something into her hus- ‘band's ear. "For that one instant, hateful- fess dl not speak fo Mary the truths of her identity” says White, “and from then ‘on, she began to speak more and more ina diferent voice for hersef™ With time, this almost unbearably {agile woman has acquired a small puppy and talks about how sweetly the dog licks her chin in the morning —at first, she had thought she was so hateful the dog would perish in her care Once terrified into paralysis by the possibility of personal re: ection, some rum later he hay organhistory of struggle and ‘protest —always,” he tan to's shopping il, wand ine {coffee shop, ordere! a cappuccino an drunk the whole thing When White aks ‘what tis event tells her about he ie and ther identity, this woman, who has believed ‘she was worthy only of death, says in a small, fil, but unwavering voce, 1 would lke 1 do someting for my wn sel” a Marys if, these ordinary events are miracles, of which nobody who views the tape can have the Least doubt Sul mysterious, however, is what White has done that bas made the dillerence. By ‘now, the theoties and methods that have aren White and David Epston, hs New Zealand colleague, an international following. are wellknown, and they clearly figure in Marys case. Through “externalizing conversions. for exams ple, White has helped Mary think about her anorexia nervous ard the attendant “Self hate”as hostile, outside forces ia bee life, not at all intrinsic to er nature and personality"When you were dsking the eappuccino,” he asks her, “did you fo Anorexia and Self hate have the upper hand?” "I had the upper band.” she answers softy, but with someting that sounds very like pride. When anorexizand selfhate are no longer inherent t0 bee very being, she can Bight them without fighting herself, she does not have to die in the act of resistance ‘White and Epsion also 1ook for ev dence of what they call the “unique “comes” ia. people's lives and the \Lsumterplos associated with then — Seemingly ephemeral, often forgotten experiences that contradict the dominant Story of abnormality, deficiency and failure. “There is always 4 history of struggle and protest—always” ays White He finds the tiny, hidden spark of fesistance within the heart of person trapped ins socially sanctioned psych atric diagnosis—"anorexia nervosa,” “schizophrenia,” “manic depression,” conduet disorder”—that tends to con sume all cher claims to enaity, Whi liberate te pockets of noncoxperation, ‘moments of personal courage and auto omy, seeapect and emotional vitality bpeneath the iron gid of lived misery and assigned pathology ‘ven in Mary tory, 6 here is always a tn almost unimaginably bleak and brutal ‘childhood, he finds the saving remnant of another, untold story. "In her darkest hours” he says, “at atime when she was being sexually abused by several people, she used 0 run away into the woods to the same tree whose trunk she could just stretch her arms around—she said she ‘could hear the tree speak to her. She had found a living thing that didn’t abuse her, a simply fantastic achievement.” Such heartbecaking moments of spiritual valor are hints, in White's credo, of Mary's subtle, halfforgotten, almost unrecog- nized dissent from the dominant story of abuse and selthatred, official psychiatric, labeling and social ostracism. people like Mary remember and about these tiny saving fragments formerty lost experience, says White, also relive and perform them as well ‘transforming meaningless autobiographi} cal aberrations into the palpable mt ‘of new stories, new lives. -N EVERY KNOWN CULTURE, PEOPLE sve meaning to thei individual orks (what happened to me as 2 chilé that allects me now, how I met my husand, ‘ty got sick and why 1 got wel) by ‘organizing them according toa time-line ‘with a beginning. middle and (perhaps Iypothesized) end In this way, we erate cour personal history White's therapeutic method may depend! more on exploring people's history than any other current approach, barring. psychoanalysis but sth profound diterence Whereasprac Aitioners ofthe later deive into personal history lke surgeons looking for hen tumors, lump of pathology in the ft distant past, White seeks out the heathy tisue, the protective antibodies, which hhe always finds For White, peoale’s present lives cannot he reduced to thet diagnoses, which are much to0 tight too confining to contain the capacious possiblities revealed in thee historia ‘Annie other theeapite who may take history into account, but only as individual case histories, White both brings history with a capital 1 ito the lives of the people he sees and, in urn, brings tem into the broad current. of Insuincal ine an place em be says White. described by an Eedvonian ther=pist 33 breaking the “tance” imposed onpeople by the powerful forces of histery and culture, making visible the intsible pattern’ of ordinary humiliations and ferrors, routine rannies and acts of violence that compase much of "cil taed” life John, for example, a therapist in training, came to see White becatie, Sas White, “he wasa man who never cxied"— hhe had never been able to express his ‘emotions—and he felt solated aad cut ff from his own fail. AS a chil, Jotn hha been taught, both at home ane this “Australian grammar school, that any show fof gentleness of "sofas" was uemanly and woul be met with harsh punisimeat and beutal public humiliation. Whi asks John a series of questions that area once political and personal, eliciting iniorma {ion about the man's"private” peycrolog ical suffering and linking i tothe “public” cultural practices, rigidly sexist and aggressively macho, that dominated his youth. “How were you recruited into these thoughts and habits [of teling Inadequate, not sficiently masculine, te}? What was the training ground for these feelings? Do you think the ruals ‘of humiliation (public caning by shoot authorities, ridicule by teachers and Students for not being good at spots oF ‘suficienly hard and ‘ough alienated you from you own life? Were they disya fications of you? Did these practices help or hinder you in recognizing diferent way of being 4 male? Having clarified the social context of John's alienation from himself in the “dominant men’s culture,” White helps him acknowledge and appreciate his ability to resist itand “reclaim” the other Stories of his life, the other selves and ways of being —gente, kind, loving that the had managed t0 keep alive, though hidden, in spite of his tormentors. Vite asks what it would have been ike for ohn, ae syoung bor, to have imac a faer ‘That litle boy would have loved i, Join replies It would have meant having a father who talked with him, who showed him love. gentleness, kindness t would have meant being accepted for himself, it would have meant having more fun."imegrity. Doesn't be ever fake 12 No, according to colleagues who have worked closely with him. His vision ofthe people he helps of the work he does, is appar. cently uncorrupted by the normal doubts, ‘exasperation, weariness. dsippointment and ordinary ill-temper about clients vented by even the most dedicated therapists from time 10 time. It is, for ‘example, a point of decpest honor and professional integrity with him not to speak diflerently in private, entre nous with other therapists, about the people the sees than he will infront of them. This i part of the famous White “congruence” that hus colleagues describe, which is not only a matter of political correctness— lundermining professional hicrarchies, equalizing the relationship between therapist and client—but a matter of ‘uimost importance to the morality of the entire therapeutic enterprise ‘There is nothing about hin that wuras ‘on and then tums off says David Motz, ‘medical director at Shoreline Community Mental. Hed fh Services in. Brunswick ly atendted 4 thee rng White, who did alive consultation with 1 family in which the father, thought Moltz was “com pletely impossible” But there wis never A moment, Moit2 sid, when White tnd cated any remote difference between his apparent feelings about the tanily —hew he appeared to them —and his cal” feel tings; there was no moment afterward sav Moltz, when he let down his guard and said something like, "Oh, my God —were they something else!” Says Moltz, “He has ‘no guard to let down; there are ng hidden ‘comers or agendas... no second order ‘of business, no waiting forthe family (0 leave before you say your real feelings ‘What you see is what you get 1A particularly revealing. story about White and his work s one he tells himself [AS a young man, before formally king Lup the profession of social worker. he worked asa gardener for what as then politically incorrectly called an “ld folks home” Paying no attention 10 ficial instructions from the institution's adi, Istrator, he collaborated wit the elderly inhabitants to create the gardens they wanted in front of their units They ud tell me where they ‘would come out wanted (0 plant shrubs. and lin they ns much about great Because I didnt ki gardening and they were teaching me professional biographical les In a sense, White has remained a gardener in the work he does now: doing therapy, lke planting and tending a garden, {sa matter of methodical atention, small steps and hard labor—dixging. spading, Pruning, watering, mulching. Good garden: fers are both practical and nsionary. They don't expect to tum the desert into a Garden of Eden, atleast not overnight, but they are optimistic enough to believe that ‘with time and effort, and the blessings of rain and sun and decent soil, they can collaborate with nature t trasform even ‘quite desolate spots into litle oases. Good gardeners are foreed to be modest. They ean provoke and prompt and suppoct natuce in certain digections butthey can’t control it—they can't make anything happen. An accenrance of thei ‘own limitations is perhaps part of the ethic of gardeners, along with a renun Cation of grandiosity and a respect for the selfcreated, self sustaining ehvtims of living things. In a sense, White's ethic of therapy is not dissimilar I san ethic that eschews the grand thcrapcutic gesture {implicit in the myths of the one session cute, the personality mikeover, the eradication of mental “disease” through biochemical wizardry. Like a gardener ‘who knows that even the most elaborate landscape must be tended step by step, plancby:plant, square foot be square foot White carefully nurtures te small tr lumphs in the lives of the pexple he sees, honors the transient moments of compet. ency, initiative, resoluteness These marginal stories are_usually neglected in the grand schemes of psycho. pathology as accidental, insignificant ‘epiphenomena that are too small to count, but they are the seeds and the soil of ‘numan transformation. “People neglect the landscapes of their own lives—they ink they are uninteresting and dull,” says White, “but T'm very curious about them, and 1 always find it interesing to hear people talk about themsetes in ways they've never done before. I often find myself up against the limit:tions of my knowledge and vision, when I don't feet ‘equal to the task, but the questions 'm faced with become the impetus for further explorations thar extend the limits of what know. I don't have any grand _gecount of the work I do—I don't think + Gantaatc, he not heroic —it just addresses a few things. We don’t need to teach people anything new: jase help ERHAPS NO THINKER HAS BEEN more important co shaping Michael Whie's worldview than the late Michel Foucault selfprociaimed “historian of systemsof thought” Akindof deconstrue Lonist hero 0 4 generation of eft leaning iellectuals in-America and Europe, Foucault's brilliant, unorthodox and controversial books Madness and Cit ‘zation; The Birth of the Cine, Discipline dnd Punish: The Birth of te Prisom The History of Sexuality, among obers— trace the relationship between power and expert knowledge (scene, medicine, psychology. penology, education, law) in the modern cra How, Foycault ask, in cflet, did the scientife and rational categories of “nocmality” and “abnormal: ity" come to dominate the measurement of human worth? One of Foucault's examples, which shows up repeatedly tn White's own Work. i the extraordinarily diverse tests of “normaley” to. which ‘modern nics and women are subjected by phalanxes of offically designated judges. "We are in the society of the teacherjudge. the doctorjudge, the educator judge, the ‘social worker Judge.” writes Foucault, in Discipline and Punish “Ic is on them that the universal ‘gn ofthe normative is based and each fndiicuat, wherever he may find himself, subjects to it [the oematve] his body, his gestures, his behavior, his atinudes, his achievements” But even more striking $ the degree to which people intersliz the demands ions of these varying norms,