Jacque Derrida
French philosopher initiated the approach to critical analysis (deconstruction) in the late 1960’s. He questioned the common belief in a one to one correspondence between words and the world we use them to signify. He saw words as a singular description of an experience (the visible description) and believed that there is a duality to all descriptions of experience and that it is on the other side of the duality that the word depends, i.e., the individual’s own meaning. - Each culture can have a different meaning for words i.e the definition of 'family' Michael White (co Founder of Narrative Therapy) later drew on this idea to begin the exploration of peoples stories which he called the the absent but implicit. We ask what people mean for certain words i.e. what do you mean by family?
gregory bateson
(English Anthropologist 1904 -1980)
Was influential in the ‘interpretive turn’ where anthropologists shifted form interpreting other cultures based on their own meaning that was known and familiar in their own culture and began to enquire about the meaning that the people they were researching were making of their experiences.
Exoticising the domestic not Domesticating the exotic
- Look at what communities do in everyday life, ask them about it and write about them so that other communities learnt about it.
- Promoting tolerance rather than colonisation
michael foucault
(French philosopher 1926-1984)
- Power through history
Was interested in the relation between people in power and the citizens within a society and consequently has been influential in the social constructionist movement and its focus on the effects of power on people.
He believed that the feeling of moral superiority that the so called barbaric people in power throughout history held, is present today in a different guise.
He believed that it is not only the visible power structures that we need to challenge if we are to avoid oppression but it is also the invisible ones. He called this invisible power modern power.
founders of narrative therapy
- Michael White
- David Epston
narrative therapy aims to
Narrative Therapy is a Social constuctionist approach to therapy that aims to …..
Deconstruct
Dominant
Discourses
narrative therapists do this by…
• Enable people to deconstruct the role that socially constructed systems play in people’s problems
• Draw attention to the stories and the themes of people’s lives, through exploring events, linked in sequence, across time, according to a plot.
• Create opportunities for people to thicken/understand better the stories from their lives that demonstrate their hopes, intentions and values (i.e. their preferred identity).
○ Not giving priority to the dominant story.
• Lead to new possibilities for action in relation to the issues they are currently facing
• Making a big deal about the skills and knowledge one possesses.
- Why were you able to make friends so easily?
assumptions underpinning narrative therapy
People are experts in their own lives and have their own meaning making skills
Personal narratives or stories are the frames through which people make meaning
When people consult therapists they tell stories that link the events of their lives in sequence, over time according to a dominant focused plot
People are not problems and pathologising descriptions of people can collude with problem stories
There is a stock of lived experience that exists outside the dominant stories people share about their lives which can be the source of new meanings
- Focusing on the other story rather than the dominant story.
what is made possible by upholding these assumptions?
- People are experts in their own lives and have their own meaning making skills
- Addresses power imbalance and invites curiosity and trust by positioning the therapist as the audience and the person consulting the therapist as the author (expert)
- This stops a power imbalance by letting the client become the expert rather than the counsellor.
- Personal narratives or stories are the frames through which people make meaning
This gives the therapist a tool to research the persons world by asking questions that position the person as the expert in their own lives rather than positioning the therapist as the the expert (with power) who offers advice.- Rather than positioning the counsellor as a diagnoser, the client is involved in the process.
- When people consult therapists they tell stories that link the events of their lives in sequence, over time according to a dominant problem focused plot
- This gives the therapist a tool to assist the person to understand the impact of the problem (which is having power over their lives) and elicit the ‘absent but implicit’ hope, i.e., the problem is as big as the unlived hope.
- Seek the problem story, understand what is implicit and offer an alternate story.
- Pathologising descriptions of people only offer thin descriptions of them and can collude with problem stories
- This assists the therapist to inquire about alternative stories that sit outside the dominant (problem) story and enables opportunities to re tell these alternate stories and create new identities.
- There are many alternate stories that exist outside of the dominant stories that people share which can be the source of new meanings
This enables the therapist to enquire about all of the skills and knowledge that the person uses in the many unnoticed alternate stories in order to give the problem story less power.
alice morgan on narrative therapy
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 and 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.As therapists and community workers we are curious about this knowledge that people have and structure our conversations to elucidate these.
narrative therapists aim to assist people to
- Let go of dominant discourses that are not serving them
- Identify alternative stories.
- Moving away from thedominant story if it is not helpful. i.e. scared of socialising
- Asking times when we have found making friends easy, asking what skills they already have to apply to general life.
- Re author their own life stories by drawing attention to times when the problem isn’t taking hold (unique outcomes)
- Retelling alternate stories until they become accepted.
- Explore absent but implicit hopes, skills and knowledge to elicit an alternate preferred story
- Become their own agents of change by using their skills and knowledge to take action
some of the ways that narrative therapists do this is by
- Let go of dominant discourses that are not serving them
- Identify alternative stories.
- Moving away from thedominant story if it is not helpful. i.e. scared of socialising
- Asking times when we have found making friends easy, asking what skills they already have to apply to general life.
- Re author their own life stories by drawing attention to times when the problem isn’t taking hold (unique outcomes)
- Retelling alternate stories until they become accepted.
- Explore absent but implicit hopes, skills and knowledge to elicit an alternate preferred story
- Become their own agents of change by using their skills and knowledge to take action
have you ever found yourself
- trying to offer advice to someone and not being able to persuade them to take the action you propose?
- persuading them to take your advice only to find them coming back to inform you that it didn’t work?
- being frustrated with someone’s situation and taking action yourself to make things better, then not knowing how to step away?
- feeling as if you are condoning a problem by listening to someone share an experience that’s similar to one that you’ve been through and not wanting to offer advice?
- being asked to‘fix’ a person’s loved one and not knowing how to engage the person in the solution?
- But we are aiming to centre the other person’s knowledge.
centreing the persons knowledge not the therapists
we want to be de-centred and influential
if being centred and non-influential the therapist is doing all the work.
absent implicit
- Absent Implicit is finding out why the behaviour is occurring and what is wrong.
centreing the persons knowledge
he therapists aims to be decentred and influential by bringing expertise in process to the conversation, i.e., double listening, externalising, eliciting unique outcome, re telling alternate stories, exploring future actions
- When therapists give advice they are privileging their own knowledge and positioning themselves as the expert holding the power.
- Thus, in narrative we don’t want to give advice, want the client to come to their own solution.
- This can be exhausting and burdening for the therapist and invalidating of the persons owns skills and knowledge. It also risks implicitly directing the person into a normative position that may or may not fit within their hopes for life.
double listening
- Listening for the problem and enquiring about the absent but implicit hopes behind the problem or behaviour
- Maria’s hopes of feeling accepted and being able to talk about her passions and interests with her peers rather than being seen as fearful or worrying.
https: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX5jNnDMfxA
externalising is
Ways of Talking that:
• Help to separate: Events, problems, issues, ideas (etc) and their effects from negative conclusions about the person or people involved
• Make it easier for people to take a position / act on issues
a simple way to externalise
- Hearing the persons story and asking them to give it a name, e.g., worry, fear
- Separating these internal feelings from the person by turning them into a noun, e.g., ‘the worry’, ‘the fear’
- Enquiring about the effects of these on the person , e.g., what has the worry had you doing or thinking about yourself and others? How has the worry had others responding to you when its present?
- Then inviting the person to take a position on the impact of the worry and the fear on her life.
offering editorials by re-telling means
• Summarising by using the persons own language
- Building on the alternative story so that the power is shifted.
• Editing out the problem and its effects and focusing on the absent but implicit hopes, skills and knowledge of the person
• Building on and developing the alternate story throughout the conversation so that the power is shifted from the problem story to a new preferred story
