Therapeutic Letters
Allows NT to extend conversations, invite reluctant family members in, summarize sessions as well as reflect on past sessions and experiences.
Summary letters
Letters of Invitation
Redundancy letters
Letters of prediction
Narrative Therapy
Definitional Ceremonies
Enûma Eliš
Providing clients the opportunity to tell the story of their lives to outside audiences
-The nonjudgmental audience can then reflect back
-Audience may be friends, family, therapists, or community members
Forming Supportive Leagues
Through shared experiences clients can build
upon each others skills to defeat the problem
Seeking Unique Outcomes
Listen for unique descriptions of events or experiences that do not fit the problematic story
These are entryways into reauthoring conversations
We have Evolved as Story Tellers
Stories about creation
Stories about nature
We tell stories about our Tribe
Therapeutic Conversations
Employing Therapeutic Questions
Explore the influence and operations of the problem
Cultural Narratives
Questioning is directed at what the person is experiencing and how the problem is being experienced.
What-"What is Self-Consciousness trying to talk you into about yourself?
How-“How does Self-Consciousness affect you socially?"
-Externalize the problem
-NO time is devoted to discovering family patterns or exploring family dynamics etc.
-Reframe the problem from internal to external
-Empower by offering opportunity to construct a new narrative
-Unravel the History of the problem
-Reconstruct an alternate story
-Impact the everyday lives of individuals
-Language holds power
-See client's through a political lens
-Consider forms of oppression
-Therapists discover how cultural narrative has impacted their self narratives
Recent Research
-Tension between research and the model
-Research often done as a reflective practice to learn more about the theory and how it operationalizes and refine practice
Usefulness found in walk-in clinics, therapy with past trauma, addiction therapy, therapy with men who evidenced abusive behavior, elders struggling with memory loss
A Therapeutic Philosophy
Therapists liberate the client from hopelessness by helping that person recognize the previously subjugated plots and subplots of their life
Narrative Therapy
Narrative Therapy Involves:
-Respect
-Non-blaming Conversation
-Clients are Experts on their own Lives
New Narratives= New Meaning
Poststructualism
Deconstruction
"Poststructural thought rejects the structuralist notion that there is a deep structure to all phenomena and that its complexity can be broken down to its elements"
Examining (re-examining) texts to find new layers of meaning and ultimately to find there is no single meaning
Leading Figures
SUMMARY
Selfish
Bad
Thick Descriptions
Thin Descriptions
Greedy
Lazy
Michael White
- Social worker
-Rejected cybernetic thinking in favor of narrative metaphor
-Influenced by feminist thought of his wife
Want to “liberate people from oppressive culturally dominated, problem-saturated stories and empowering them to reauthor their lives to develop more rewarding dominant stories and lead more fulfilling lives
Narrative therapists do not help clients replace stories, but to enrich, them by viewing them non-dualistically.
Superficial, insubstantial descriptors of internal states such as normal/abnormal
Comprehensive Understanding of the Person comes from telling and re-telling the story of their history and identity
Often imposed by others (teacher, doctors, parents, clergy and established as truth
These end up being generalizations that involve labeling
Enriched, Intentional, and Multistoried
-Focus on helping clients gain access to preferred storylines about their lives.
-Therapist is influential but decentered
-Based on poststructural thinking that challenges the need for underlying truths by deconstructing old truths replacing them with multi-storied narratives
-The client is not the problem, the problem is the problem
-Ceremonies, letters and leagues can help authenticate the new story
"I believe we must become great storytellers"
Presented By: Brandon Bishop, Maryanne Kaboi and Monika Leininger