NARRATIVE THERAPY

Narrative Therapy

Narrative Therapy

Introduction

A narrative is described as the story created of a person's life experiences and relationships as influenced by the community as well as the individual (White & Denborough, 1998:3). It entails telling, retelling and listening to the stories and problems in people's lives. These stories give meaning and shape to the participant's life. Through the use of the mental narrative people organize, understand and predict the intricacy of their experiences. The meaning ascribed to events and considered options, fundamentally shape choices (Freeman, Epston & Lobovits, 1997: xv). The majority of communities lead individuals to see him/herself as the problem when s/he experiences hardship. S/he believes him/herself to be deficient or a failure or to blame and take this belief on as the dominant story of his/her experience (Morgan, 2000:7-8). Because the person feels responsible for the problem that s/he has taken on personally, his/her worth, character and nature are often reflected on negatively by him/her. These dominant, problem saturated stories are often `proved' by truths' of unexamined class, gender and cultural assumptions.

Narrative therapy seeks to be a deferential, non-blaming approach to psychoanalysis and societal work, which centers individuals as the experts in their own existence. It views troubles as separate from individuals and assumes individuals have quite a few skills, competencies, beliefs, principles, commitments as well as abilities that will help them to decrease the influence of troubles in their existence.

There are a variety of principles which notify narrative techniques of working, but in my view, two are mainly important: techniques maintaining a position of curiosity, and techniques asking questions to which you authentically do not know the replies.

Collaboration

Significantly, the individual consulting the therapist plays an important role in mapping the way of the journey. Narrative conversations are interactive in collaboration with the individuals consulting the therapist. The therapist seeks to recognize what is of interest to the individuals consulting them and how the expedition is suiting their preferences. You will often hear, for instance, a narrative therapist asking:* How is this discussion going for you?* Should we keep speaking about this or would you be more curious in talking about …?* Is this appealing to you? Is this what we must spend our time chatting about?* I was thinking if you would be more concerned in me asking you some more regarding this or whether we must emphasize on something that you would like to talk about like X, Y or Z? [X, Y, Z being other options]In this technique, narrative conversations are led and directed by the wellbeing of those who are consulting the therapist.

The resolution in such a case would be for the person to broaden the alternative stories in his/her life that s/he has chosen to forget or ignore in an attempt to rid him/herself of the problem (White & Denborough, 1998:3; Freeman, Epston & Lobovits, 1997:xv, 95). Narrative therapy is an appropriate method of bringing about healing and behavior change as a new story is developed and ...