2/7/2024

Narrative Therapy

Content
• Description and history
• Overview and goals
• Role of the Therapist
• Considerations
• Techniques and Practices
• References and Resources

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Dulwich Centre description

Narrative therapy seeks to be a respectful, non-blaming approach to counselling
and community work which centres people as the experts in their own lives. It views
problems as separate from people and assumes people have many skills,
competencies, beliefs, values, commitments and abilities that will assist them to
reduce the influence of problems in their lives.

History
• In the 1980s, Michael White from Adelaide, Australia, and David Epston from
Auckland, New Zealand, developed what has come to be known as “narrative
family therapy.”
• White passed away in 2008, but not before NT became widely accepted as a
standard option in family therapy.
• White and Epston’s original book Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends was
inspired and shaped by Michael Foucault’s theory of power and knowledge.
• Foucault’s work highlights how social power forges the knowledge that people
use to interpret their lives. Using these ideas, NT challenges the dominant
knowledges that restrict clients from progressing in their lives.

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Stories
• The word ‘story’ has different associations and understandings for different people. For
narrative therapists, stories consist of:
• events
• linked in sequence
• across time
• according to a plot
• As humans, we are interpreting beings. We all have daily experiences of events that we
seek to make meaningful. The stories we have about our lives are created through linking
certain events together in a particular sequence across a time period, and finding a way
of explaining or making sense of them. This meaning forms the plot of the story. We give
meanings to our experiences constantly as we live our lives. A narrative is like a thread
that weaves the events together, forming a story.
• We all have many stories about our lives and relationships, occurring simultaneously. For
example, we have stories about ourselves, our abilities, our struggles, our competencies,
our actions, our desires, our relationships, our work, our interests, our conquests, our
achievements, our failures. The way we have developed these stories is determined by
how we have linked certain events together in a sequence and by the meaning we have
attributed to them.
Alice Morgan's 'What is Narrative Therapy?'

Goal of Narrative Therapy

Narrative therapy seeks to change a problematic narrative into a more
productive or healthier one. This is often done by assigning the person
the role of narrator in their own story.

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Role of the Therapist

• Search for an alternative way of understanding a client’s narrative or an
alternative way to describe it.
• The belief is that telling a story is a form of action toward change.
Therefore, the therapist will help clients to objectify their problems, frame
these problems within a larger sociocultural context, and teach the person
how to make room for other stories.
• During therapy, the therapist acts as a non-directive collaborator. They
treat the client as the expert on their own problems and do not impose
judgments.
• Instead, the therapist is purely curious and investigative. They are not
particularly interested in the cause of a problem but are open to a client’s
perception of the cause.

Considerations
• Length can vary significantly depending on client
• Language and literacy are at it’s base but we can navigate this by
using art and play
• Can feel a little too existentialist – client’s can feel we are not
addressing “real” problems, could be invalidating
• Caution to be used with rigid thinkers

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Overview of Techniques

Practices in Narrative Therapy

Practice 1 Position collaboratively • Adopt a collaborative co-authoring consultative position.
• Be open about therapeutic context, intentions and values
• Privilege clients' language
• Question about multiple viewpoints, rather than the objective facts
• Privilege listening over questioning
• Be vigilant for opportunities to open up space for new liberating stories

Practice 2 Externalize the problem • Help clients see themselves as separate from their problems through
externalizing the problem
• Join with clients in fighting the externalized problem
Refer to Handout
Practice 3 Excavate unique outcomes • Help clients pinpoint times in their lives when they were not oppressed
by their problems by finding unique outcomes.
• Help clients describe these preferred valued experiences.
Practice 4 Thicken the new plot Ask landscape of action and identity questions to thicken the description
of the unique outcome.
• Landscape of action questions focus on:
• Events
• Sequences
• Time
• Plot Landscape of consciousness focus on:
• Meaning
• Effects
• Evaluation
• Justification

Practice 5 Link to the past and extend to the • Link the unique outcome to other past events
future • Extend the story into the future
• Form an alternative and preferred self-narrative in which the self is
viewed as more powerful than the problem.
Practice 6 Invite outsider witness groups • Invite significant members of the persons social network to witness this
new self-narrative. This is the outsider witness group

Practice 7 Use re-membering practices and • Re-connect clients with internal representations of supportive and
incorporation significant members of their families and networks

Practice 8 Use literary means Use literary means to document and celebrate new knowledges and
practices.
• Certificates and awards
• News releases
• Personal declarations and letters of reference

Practice 9 Facilitate bringing-it-back practices • Invite clients to make a written account of new knowledges and
practices for future clients with similar problems
• Arrange for new clients to meet with clients who have solved similar
problems in therapy

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Position Collaboratively
• Be a Consultant instead of a Psychologist
• Privilege and use client language
• Question about multiple viewpoints, rather than the objective facts
• Privilege listening over questioning
• Be vigilant for opportunities to open up space for new liberating stories

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Externalising the problem

• In Narrative Therapy the problem becomes the antagonist of the story. Certain behaviours are
based on particular ‘unhealthy’ or ‘undesired’ characteristics – such as lack of patience,
aggressiveness, etc. Thus, they are approached as not a part of the client but as an opposing force
which needs to be ‘defeated’. An example would be a child that has a very bad temperament and
tends to be aggressive to other kids at school and his parents.
• The child might feel guilty for his temperament and blame it on himself (“I don’t know… it is the
way I am…”). The counsellor will work with him towards isolating that undesired trait
(aggressiveness) and placing it as an external trait – not a characteristic of the individual.
• This strategy helps clients re-construct their own stories in a way which will reduce the incidence
of the problem in order to eliminate negative outcomes and reinforce personal development and
achievement. The protagonist becomes the author and re-writes the story constructively.

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Externalising the problem example activity

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Unique Outcomes
• If a story is full of problems and negative events, the counsellor will attempt to identify the
exceptional positive outcomes.
• When exploring unique positive outcomes in the story, the counsellor will assist the client in
redeveloping the narrative with a focus on those unique outcomes. This assists the client in
empowering him/herself by creating a notion that those unique outcomes can prevail over the
problems.
• Think about this analogy: you are a novel writer. You were given a novel to review and publish the
way you prefer. You have read it and found it generally poor, but there were some interesting
ideas which you liked. You selected these ideas, and re-write the novel around them. You can
make a flawed story become a bestseller.

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Unique Outcomes - Finding the positives

Timeline

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Thicken the Plot

• Based on Foucault’s work.
• Ask landscape of action and identity questions to thicken the description of
the unique outcome.
• Landscape of action questions focus on:
• Events
• Sequences
• Time
• Plot Landscape of consciousness focus on:
• Meaning
• Effects
• Evaluation
• Justification

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Link to the Past and Extend the Future

• Explore the strengths and positive aspects of an individual through his or her narrative. with the
main objective of this to improve the person’s perspective internally (reflective) and externally
(towards the world and others). Alternative narratives are a simple way to relate to this concept.
This technique works in combination with unique outcomes.
• How? The individual will reconstruct a personal story using unique outcomes, therefore, focusing
on the positive aspects of a previous story in order to achieve a desired outcome. This process is
based on the premise that any person can continually and actively re-author their own life.
• By creating alternative perspectives on a narrative (or event within the narrative) the counsellor is
able to assist the client in bringing about a new narrative which will help combat the ‘problems’.
This is similar to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy as it aims to create a positive perspective of an
event.

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Example

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Re-Membering
• Re-connect clients with internal representations of supportive and significant
members of their families and networks
• Re-membering conversations are shaped by the conception that identity is
founded upon an "association of life" rather than on a core self.
• This association of life has a membership composed of the significant figures and
identities of a person's past, present, and projected future, whose voices are
influential with regard to the construction of the person's identity.
• Re-membering conversations provide an opportunity for people to revise the
memberships of their association of life: to upgrade some memberships and to
downgrade others; to honour some memberships and to revoke others; to grant
authority to some voices in regard to matters of one's personal identity, and to
disqualify other voices with regard to this.

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Re-Membering conversations
The first set of inquiry:
1. recounting figure’s contribution to person’s life
2. person’s identity through the eyes of the figure
The second set of inquiry:
1. person’s contribution to the figure’s life, and
2. implications of this contribution for the figure’s sense of identity

See Re-Membering article

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Literary means
• Use literary means to document and celebrate new knowledges and
practices.
• Certificates and awards
• News releases
• Personal declarations and letters of reference

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Bring it back
• Invite clients to make a written account of new knowledges and
practices for future clients with similar problems
• Arrange for new clients to meet with clients who have solved similar
problems in therapy

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References and Resources

• Australian Institute of Professional Counsellors
• Dulwich Centre

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