History
What is Brief & Narrative Therapy?
Brief & Narrative Therapy brings a narrative therapy philosophy and practice into time-sensitive counselling arenas such as walk-in therapy clinics and other forms of single session and brief services. It creates a non-pathologizing, collaborative, and competency-oriented way of working with people in brief settings. The aim is to make the most of every single session providing therapeutic conversations to people when they need it. It is based on the principle of “when all the time you have is now” that promotes the facilitation of a meaningful, useful conversation immediately. This is a departure from more traditional practices of assessment and information gathering dominating the initial contacts people have with the helping system.
In therapeutic conversations influenced by narratives ideas, we work to develop novel and uniquely understood stories of the problem and to co-discover with people neglected stories of their preferences, values, commitments, skills and knowledge.
Narrative therapy is a collaborative and non-pathologizing approach to counselling which views people as experts of their own lives. A narrative therapist understands problems as separate from people and assumes people have many skills, abilities, values, commitments, beliefs and competencies that will assist them to change their relationship with problems influencing their lives. It is a way of working that considers the broader context of people's lives, the backstories, and the ways history and cultural requirements influence how we understand problems and ourselves.
Stories are made up of events, linked in a sequence, occurring over time according to a theme or plot. A story emerges as certain events are privileged and selected out over other events. What is selected is not a neutral task but is highly influenced by our history and by dominant social narratives. Stories serve to describe and then to shape people’s lives as people ‘narrativize’ their experience of the world and themselves in it. Our identities are continually constructed and re-constructed by stories that we tell to ourselves and to others. Our lives and identities are multi-storied.
In therapeutic conversations influenced by narratives ideas, we work to develop novel and uniquely understood stories of the problem and to co-discover with people neglected stories of their preferences, values, commitments, skills and knowledge. Our curiosity makes it possible for new knowledges to become co-developed in a collaborative conversation. Realizations, pivotal and 'aha' moments emerge in these conversations that point the way toward new possibilities in people’s lives and relationships.
Brief Narrative Therapy's Historical Development
Excerpt from: Ramey, H.L., Young, K. & Tarulli, D. (2010) Scaffolding and Concept Formation in Narrative Therapy: A Qualitative Research Report. Journal of Systemic Therapies, Volume 29, No. 4, p. 74-91. Development of Narrative Therapy
White and Epston’s narrative therapy began evolving in the 1980s with their foundational Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends, published in 1990. They drew on the theories of several philosophers and critical thinkers and applied these to their practice, creating a new model of family therapy built around the metaphor of stories. From that time, White continued to explore this story metaphor, over the years expanding his thinking and narrative practice through exploring the work of many additional theorists.
White and Epston (1990) began exploring their story metaphor in therapy using ideas from Bruner (1986) and Geertz (1986). These initial explorations led to the formulation of cornerstone concepts in narrative therapy: externalizing and unique outcomes. Externalizing in narrative therapy involves naming, objectifying, and even personifying the problem to separate people from dominant, problem-saturated stories. These dominant stories often do not reflect people’s preferred ways of being and may obscure alternative interpretations. Alternative interpretations, also known as “unique outcomes” or “initiatives” (White, 2006b), are any stories, ideas or events that would not have been predicted by the dominant problem story. Intertwining with and elaborating on these notions are Bateson’s (1979) ideas of explanation and change, Derrida’s (Derrida & Caputo, 1997) deconstruction, Geertz (1973) and Myerhoff’s (1982, 1986) anthropological contributions, Foucault’s (1980) deliberation of power (see also Danaher, Schirato & Webb, 2000) and, finally, White’s (2007) vision of scaffolding in Vygotsky’s (1978) zone of proximal development.
Michel Foucault’s work appears to have had the most significant influence on White (Duvall & Young, 2009; White, 1989), with White and Epston’s (1990) narrative therapy approach clearly incorporating Foucault’s ideas on modern power/knowledge, the socio-political context it creates, and its constitutive effects (Besley, 2002; White, 2002). Foucauldian notions of power (Danaher et al., 2000; Foucault, 1980) lead to the practice of deconstruction in narrative therapy, which manifests itself in a questioning of the taken-for-granted (White, 2002, 2007). More specifically, deconstruction is accomplished by questioning the meaning and history of problems and other significant constructs that arise in therapy, and by examining unique outcomes that fall outside the dominant story. Deconstruction also takes place through the unpacking of practices of power and disciplinary technologies of the self, and by questioning therapeutic discourses themselves.
Instead of classifying and objectifying individuals, the narrative therapy practice of externalization re-situates the problem outside of people, challenging cultural discourses that pre-suppose that individuals can be categorized and their potentials fully contained by those categorizations. Together with deconstruction, externalizing the problem questions this social control and these normalizing truths, unsettling the effects of modern power (White, 1989). The use of externalizing and deconstruction in therapy is intended to liberate people from labels, allow new ideas to influence the effects of the problem, present opportunities for multiple interpretations, discourage blame, and encourage agency instead of feelings of failure and oppression (White, 1989).
White (2007) later developed maps, such as the statement of position maps, to guide narrative conversations. These maps suggest particular lines of questioning for therapists to follow, assisting in the development of understandings of where people stand in relation to problems and unique outcomes. The narrative therapist does not attempt to lead clients to any specific understandings or ideas, but rather creates opportunities for people to make discoveries. Although these maps for therapy continue to be offered as a useful tool, they usually have been accompanied by the caution that “a map is not the territory” (Korzybski, 1933, p. 58); that is, the steps on the map are only that, and cannot reflect or capture the emergent, temporally open nature of what happens in the course of therapy.
References:
Bateson, G. (1979). Mind and nature. New York: E. P. Dutton.
Bruner, J. (1986). Actual minds, possible worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Danaher, G., Schirato, T., & Webb, J. (2000). Understanding Foucault. London: Sage.
Derrida, J., & Caputo, J. D. (1997). Deconstruction in a nutshell: A conversation with Jacques Derrida. New York: Fordham University Press.
Duvall, J., & Young, K. (2009). Keeping the faith: A conversation with Michael White. Journal of Systemic Therapies, 28, 1-18.
Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977 (Colin Gordon, Ed. & Trans.). New York: Pantheon Books.
Geertz, C. (1986). Making experience, authoring selves. In V. W. Turner & E. M. Bruner (Eds.), The anthropology of experience (pp. 373-380). Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Geertz, C. (1973). Thick description: Toward an interpretative theory of culture. In The interpretation of cultures (pp. 3-30). New York: Basic Books.
Korzybski, A. (1933). Science and sanity: An introduction to non-Aristotelian systems and general semantics. Lakeville, CT: International Non-Aristotelian Library Publishing Company.
Myerhoff, B. (1982). Life history among the elderly: Perfomance, visibility, and remembering. In J. Ruby (Ed.), A crack in the mirror: Reflexive perspective in anthropology (pp. 99-117). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Myerhoff, B. (1986). Life not death in Venice: Its second life. In V. W. Turner & E. M. Bruner (Eds.), The anthropology of experience (pp. 261-286). Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes (M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, & E. Souberman, Eds.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
White, M. (1989). Selected papers. Adelaide, Australia: Dulwich Centre Publications.
White, M. (2002). Addressing personal failure. The International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work, 3, 33-76.
White, M. (2007). Maps of narrative practice. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.