This is the Chapter 7 of the book The Individual (de Bruin, E., 1st Edition). Which is content for the exam of the Theory component of Module 4 (The Individual) of the University of Twente, in the Netherlands.

Ch.9: Narrative approaches in therapy

Narrative therapy

“Based in a relational understanding of identity, in which a person’s sense of self is not viewed as a fixed psychological structure, but instead as a fluid construct”

• Narrative perspective: individuals/groups create personal/social realities through use of language, and problems understood as brought into being through language
  • Therapist: facilitate conversation within which new meaning can be found
• Conversational approaches: imply strengths perspective --> intention engage in conversation implies person has ideas about how to resolve their problem

Philosophies interpreting narrative therapy

• Constructivism: reality constructed at individual level
• Social constructionism: the meaning of phenomena/event is constructed by people working together. Specifically, historical factors --> therapy focus how client positions themselves in relation to cultural discourses
• Post-structuralism: questions any totalising explanations of human behaviour on an all-knowing God’s eye view. Instead, it seeks to understand by carefully describing/analysing what people actually do
• Postmodernism: direction of increasing scepticism about validity of universal truths such as psychoanalysis, Marxism, or Christianity --> it replaces grand narratives with more pragmatic local knowledge that reflects interests of people in particular times and places.

Core elements of narrative therapy

• Narrative therapy: post-structuralist and broadly social constructionist position
  • Personal experience and meaning as embedded in culture and shaped by culture
  • Identity product of:
    
    • History of culture
    • Position in society
    • Linguistic resources available to the individual
• Externalising the problem: involve separating oneself and one’s relationship from problem --> allowing one to take a lighter approach to the issue. The problem is understood as arising from dominant narrative
  
  • How does the problem stay strong, and how does the problem influence your life?
• A rite de passage: person negotiates passage from one status to another
  
  • Separation stage: become detached from previous social role
  • Liminal stage: time of exploration and confusion
  • Reincorporation stage: when they re-enter society in a new role
• Absent but implicit: way of listening characteristic of narrative therapy, with the key principle that when person talks about problem, they are not just describing their difficulties, but are also invoking an implicit contrast with ‘what the problem is not’
• Reflecting team: aim to offer a response that will allow client to make connection with stories/experience of others in a ways that would strengthen their story.

Narrative-informed approaches to therapy

• Mahoney’s constructivist therapy: relaxation skills training, problem-solving and cognitive restructuring
• The solutions-focused approach to therapy: enable client to articulate/act on the widest possible range of solutions to their problems (e.g. focusing on change, talking in a problem-free way, finding the exception to the problem, …)
  
  • Miracle question: when you go to sleep and a miracle happens and the problem that has been discussed in the sessions disappears. When you wake up, what would be the first sings for you to know that a miracle has happened?
• Collaborative therapy and dialogical therapy: stresses importance of dialogue between equal partners to enable conversations to take place within which new meanings can emerge