NARRATIVE THERAPY

Narrative therapy, as developed by Michael White and David Epston, theorizes that people organize their lives into stories. Problems with "identity conclusions" (self-image) or "performances" (actions) mean a persons life is dominated by a problem-saturated story. Problem-saturated stories dominate a person's life at the expense of alternative, successful stories that the individual hides in the margins of their life story. These other, preferred stories are disqualified or made invisible by stories that have become prominent in the culture, such as capitalism; psychiatry/psychology; patriarchy; heterosexuality; and Eurocentricity. Simple black/white stories, such as healthy/unhealthy; normal/abnormal; and functional/dysfunctional ignore how complex an individual's life story is — and trivialize the personal and cultural meanings an individual's experiences carry when understood in context.

Narrative practice involves telling a new story, one that makes central the qualities or attributes that the individual may have taken for granted. "Externalization" of the story gives individuals a new perspective: "The person is not the problem, the problem is the problem." It also centralizes the many successes that any survivor must have experienced, even if they have devalued them along the way. Strengths or positive attributes are thus also externalized — allowing people to construct and perform preferred identities.

In practice, the client creates meaning and deconstructs stories, building "richer," "thicker" stories in collaboration with the therapist through a process of gentle questioning. The therapist acts as an "investigative reporter," drawing out details of the client's "life story." The result is that negative, or "thin," stories gradually lose their hold on the client.

I use narrative therapy in my practice in grief work and other times that life review is similarly appropriate.