Narrative Family Therapy

Assefa Berihun

Nov. 2013: Lecture for MA in Counseling students

Narrative Therapy
 Narrative Therapy
 NT was developed by Michael White in Australia and David Episton in
New Zealand.
 It is a method of therapy that attempts to separate the person from the
problem.
 The central tenet which drives NT is that human life is based on stories and
these stories are written out of the experiences of life.
 Narrative Therapy

 Emphasis is on victory over problems & not on problem-saturated story.

 Emphasis is on uniqueness of persons, not their “deviance”

 Concerned only with the ways that people construct meaning (with
language) rather than on their behavior.

 The “facts” are part historical and part social construction. The
constructions may or may not be helpful to the client.

 Rather than imposing a reframing of a problem, the therapist explores new

ways that the client himself can construct a new view.
 Key Concepts of Narrative Therapy
 Listen to clients with an open mind
 Encourage clients to share their stories

 Listen to a problem-saturated story of a client without getting stuck

 Therapists demonstrate respectful curiosity and persistence
 The person is not the problem, but the problem is the problem
 The Therapeutic Process in NT
 Collaborate with the client in identifying (naming) the problem
 Separate the person from his or her problem
 Investigate how the problem has been disrupting or dominating the
person
 Search for exceptions to the problem
 Ask clients to speculate about what kind of future they could expect
from the competent person that is emerging
 Create an audience to support the new story
 Narrative Therapist’s function and role

 To become active facilitators

 To demonstrate care, interest, respectful curiosity, openness, empathy,
contact, and fascination
 To adopt a not-knowing position that allows being guided by the client’s
story
 Therapeutic Relationship

 Emphasize the quality of therapeutic relationship, in particular

therapists’ attitudes

 Client-as-expert, clients are the primary interpreters of their own

experiences
 Therapists seek to understand client's lived experience and avoid
effort to predict, interpret, and pathologies.
 Therapeutic Techniques

 No recipe/method/way, no set agenda, and no formula

 This approach is grounded in a philosophical framework
 Questions—and more questions:
► Questions are used as a way to generate experience rather than to
gather information
► Asking questions can lead to separating “person” from “problem”,
identifying preferred directions, and creating alternative stories to
support these directions.
 Therapeutic Techniques

 Externalization & Deconstruction

 Externalization is a process of separating the person from
identifying with the problem

 Externalizing conversations can lead clients in recognizing

times when they have dealt successfully with the problem

 Problem-saturated stories are deconstructed/decomposed before

new stories are co-created
 Therapeutic Techniques
 Search for unique outcomes
 Creating Alternative Stories
 Documenting the evidence
Therapists write and send a letter to clients between sessions regarding
their strengths and accomplishments, alternative story, and unique
outcomes or exceptions to the problems.
 Narrative
Family Therapy
 Narrative Family Therapy

 Major theorists: Michael White, David Epston

 Theoretical Premises
1. Based on “liberation philosophy” (postmodern, social constructionist)
which avoids objectification of people/families—belief that problems
arise because of culturally-induced subscription to narrow and self-
defeating views of self and world
2. No normative pattern to be achieved (meaning, purposefulness, health
determined by each family/culture/situation)
3. Focuses on narrative reasoning (versus logico-scientific)—asserts that
people live their lives by stories, and these can be re-written (re-authoring
in creative ways)
4. Families encouraged to externalize their problems (problem becomes
separate entity, avoids blaming traps)
 Narrative Family Therapy Techniques
(NFTT)
1. Externalization of problem—the problem is the problem, and is given a
name. Family and members not defined by problem

2. Influence of the Problem on each Person

3. Influence of the Person on the Problem

4. Raising Dilemmas—examine aspects of problem before need arises
5. Predicting Setbacks/hindrance —they almost inevitable, best dealt with
when anticipated
 NFTT cont.
6. Using Questions
 Exceptions-oriented
 Significance of exceptions

7. Letters to client families—a form of case note to family, put in

transparent/congruent statements

8.Celebrations/certificates—festive,
signify (denote/suggest) victory/achievement, tailored to circumstances
by wording, printed and include logo (For achievements in conquest of
“Apathy”)
 Summary
 Identify the problem’s relationship with the person and family
 Understand the family and couple's response to the problem
 Relationally externalize internalize problem discourse
 Bring forth histories of loss in their relationship to problems
 Support subordinate/alternative stories and re-remembering/ conversations
 Invite re-authoring conversations
 Case
 Solome has been rejected by her family members and close relatives
after she has got a child born out of wedlock. She used to abuse alcohol
and Khat and sleep over with different men. Currently, she is abstained
from her ill-behavior and started life being employed at a certain
government organization but has a strong remorse for her past deeds and
worries about others perception against her.
