Describe a therapeutic approach of your choice in terms of key concepts and therapeutic process.

Authors Avatar
The use of Narrative Therapy

Describe a therapeutic approach of your choice in terms of key concepts and therapeutic process.

Also explain how this approach contributes to your self understanding.

Describe the ethical and multicultural relevant issues.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS 2

INTRODUCTION 4

2 THE CONTEXT OF NARRATIVE THERAPY 4

3 KEY CONCEPTS OF NARRATIVE THERAPY 5

3.1 The narrative metaphor 5

3.2 Social constructionism 5

3.3 Post-modernism 6

3.4 Post-structuralism 7

4 THE THERAPEUTIC PROCESS 7

4.1 A re-authoring therapy 7

4.2 Telling the problem-saturated story 7

4.3 Naming the problem 7

4.4 Externalising discourses 8

4.5 Deconstructing dominant discourses 8

4.6 Constructing Positive Alternatives - Unique Outcomes 8

4.7 Taking a position on the problem 9

4.8 Re-telling the new story 9

4.9 Audiences 9

4.10 Therapeutic documents 10

4.11 Ending therapy 10

5 THERAPEUTIC GOALS 10

5.1.1 Re-authoring of a problem-saturated life story 10

5.1.2 Privileging family members 10

5.1.3 Creating a safe space 10

6 THERAPIST'S FUNCTION AND ROLE 11

7 CLIENT'S EXPERIENCE IN THERAPY 11

8 RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THERAPIST AND CLIENT 11

9 A CONTRIBUTION TO MY SELF UNDERSTANDING 12

9.1 My thin and problem-saturated story 12

9.2 Externalising the problem 12

9.3 Unique Outcomes 13

9.4 An audience 13

9.5 Retelling my new story 13

0 MULTICULTURAL ISSUES 14

1 ETHICAL ISSUES 15

2 CONCLUSION 15

3 REFERENCE LIST: 16

INTRODUCTION

The therapeutic modality I have chosen is Narrative therapy because I find it to be a useful approach that is not directive and instrumental, but is rather an attitudinal collaborative approach that influences a therapist's way of being. This approach does not lend itself to any specific techniques in the counseling process but makes use of a wide variety of methods of intervention to assist the individual in need.

According the narrative metaphor we all make sense of our lives through stories or self-narratives. At times our self-narratives may be thin or self-limiting and a re-authoring process may help us to remember forgotten parts of our narratives as we re-tell our new thicker self-story.

In this assignment I will explain the narrative metaphor as an approach to counselling and discuss the key concepts underlying it and the therapeutic process of narrative therapy. I will also discuss how the narrative metaphor contributed to my personal growth and self-understanding, the potential use of this approach at Crescent Clinic where I spent time, and the multicultural and ethical issues surrounding this approach.

2 THE CONTEXT OF NARRATIVE THERAPY

In order to explain the process of Narrative therapy it is helpful to briefly place it in the context of a paradigm shift that began in the 1950s. Several writers have contributed to this "new epistemology" which has "a common foundation in the writings of Gregory Bateson" (Searight & Openlander, 1987, p.52).

The movement has progressed through several waves. The first wave was a move away from pathologising the individual to focusing on relational "patterns that connect" (Bateson, 1979) within a system. This was a recursive process where positive and negative feedback loops maintained the stability of the system as it resisted change. Symptoms were perceived as communicating a message (Haley, 1963 Minuchin, 1974, 1981; Watzlawick, Weakland & Fisch, 1963) that a system required a change in structure (Minuchin 1974, 1981) or a change in relational dynamics (Haley, 1963). The therapist intervened in the system in a directive and instrumental way as one proffering expert knowledge and experience. This first order cybernetics (or simple cybernetics / engineering cybernetics) offered much excitement as therapists engaged in a new way of doing therapy that presented striking results with little or no insight necessary on the part of the identified patient.

A recognition that the pathology had been moved from the individual to the family (Hoffman, 1985, 1998) resulted in a second wave where the therapist was perceived as part of the system. Here one cybernetic system was recognised as observing another cybernetic system as well as the fact that the very act of observing changed the observed. This second order cybernetics (or cybernetics of cybernetics / biological cybernetics) was much less directive, to the extent that it was at times criticised as irrelevant. The focus was on how people constructed their realities.

A third wave moved away from the mechanistic model of cybernetics to a more hermeneutic or interpretive model (Anderson, 1997; Anderson & Levin, 1998) considering the metaphors of narrative and social construction (Freedman and Combs, 1996; Anderson & Levin, 1998) in the process of meaning making. It is here that narrative therapy falls. Umpleby (2001) terms this social cybernetics. Where a first order cybernetic model favours realism and suggests that reality can be known out there and a second order cybernetic model considers that reality is socially constructed and that no objective reality can be known, rooting this belief in neurophysiology in line with the radical constructivism camp, social cybernetics adopts interactional constructionism (O'Hanlon, 1993) or social constructionism (Gergen, 1985) which recognises how people create and maintain and change their reality through language and the story telling of for example narrative therapy. Here the paradigm has once again shifted - from system to story (Freedman & Combs, 1996)

Michael White and his colleague David Epston are recognized for exploring the narrative metaphor under the umbrella of narrative therapy albeit they are humble in taking credit for it. This writer is aware of the fact that she will present a narrative within this missive that is her own understanding (and hopefully not too much of a misunderstanding) of the writings of White and Epston (White & Epston, 1990; Epston, White & Murray, 1992; White, 1995; White, 1997)). In addition she will present her understanding of others (Payne, 2000; Freedman & Combs, 1993, 1996; Vorster, 2003; Corey, 2001) that have engaged with White and Epston's writings as well as related their own insights and experiences while engaging with this metaphor.

3 KEY CONCEPTS OF NARRATIVE THERAPY

There are several key concepts that inform narrative therapy. The two most import concepts are the narrative and the social constructionist metaphors. Post-modernism and post-structuralism also merit attention.

3.1 The narrative metaphor

nar·ra·tive n.

. A narrated account; a story.

2. The art, technique, or process of narrating. (www.dictionary.com)

Drawing on the works of the social scientists Jerome Bruner and Clifford Geertz (1983, 1986 cited in Freedman & Combs, 1993), White (1990) used the text analogy and compared it to a life story or "self narrative" (Gergen & Gergen, cited in White, 1990) in the therapeutic discourse. Bateson (1972, 1979) believed that people make meaning of their lives by situating events in stories. White has expanded this belief within the narrative metaphor by contending that people can change the stories of their lives by recognising the dominant discourses that do not fit with one's current story.

In narrative therapy the therapist and person with a thin narrative, known as a client or patient in dominant therapeutic discourses, work collaboratively to thicken 1 or create a richer narrative in the process of re-authoring their history or life narrative.

"Stories are full of gaps which persons must fill in order for the story to be performed. These gaps recruit the lived experience and the imagination of persons. With every performance persons are re-authoring their lives" (White, 1990, p. 13, emphasis mine)

3.2 Social constructionism

So cial con struc tion ism n

in sociology, a school of thought pertaining to the ways social phenomena are created, institutionalized, and made into tradition by humans (www.dictionary.com)

The metaphor of social constructionism (as previously mentioned also known as interactional constructionism) directs us to regard the way that our realities and sense of meaning are constructed in interaction with one another. Social constructionism holds that "knowledge rests heavily on social consensus. Our social experiences and interactions shape what we take to be reality and what we regard as truth" (Hare-Mustin & Marecek, 1997, p.105).

Particular institutions such as language contribute to the creation of meaning in our lives. Humberto Maturana said "we distinguish in language. What we don't distinguish doesn't happen to us." (n.d). Gergen (1985) referrs to "communal interchange" (p.266). Thus, reality is socially constructed and language is used to achieve this (Hare-Mustin & Marecek, 1997; Hoffman, 1992; Vorster, 2003). Language is understood "as the means by which people come to understand their world and in their knowing simultaneously to construct it" (Becvar & Becvar, 2000, p. 88, emphasis mine).

This metaphor is integral to narrative therapy as we use language to tell our problem-saturated story, unique outcomes and our new rich narrative.
Join now!


The social constructionist therapist:

* Believes in a socially constructed reality.

* Emphasises the reflexive nature of the therapeutic relationship in which client and therapist co-construct meaning in dialogue and conversation.

* Moves away from the hierarchical distinctions toward a more egalitarian offering of ideas and respect for differences.

* Maintains empathy and respect for the client's predicament and a belief in the power of the therapeutic conversation to liberate suppressed, ignored, or previously unacknowledged voices or stories.

* Co-constructs goals and negotiates direction in therapy, placing the client back in the driver's ...

This is a preview of the whole essay