Origins of
narrative psychotherapy
Australian therapists
Michael White and David Epston are generally regarded as founders
of narrative approach in psychotherapy. Though the whole concept is
naturally based on the work of many other people. A significant
inspiration for example came from an American psychiatrist Milton H.
Ericson, who, in 1965, wrote:
"The
therapist’s task should not be a proselytizing of the patient with
his own beliefs and understandings. ... What is needed is the
development of a therapeutic situation permitting the patient to use
his own thinking, his own understandings, his own emotions in the way
that best fits him in his scheme of life."
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Social
constructionism
In
our work we recognise the fact, that each person's experience is
subjectively unique. The ways people interpret the world and their
lives differ from nation to nation, generation to generation and
person to person. People are creating their reality in correlation
with how they experience it and how they communicate it in social
interaction. People from different cultural backgrounds will have
different opinions, values, norms and habits. Reality, respectively
our idea about what is and what is not real, is not necessarily a
fixed standard, but it is rather a social construct. It is a certain
consensus, which is structured by language, and maintained and
distributed by narrations.
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Externalization
of problems/difficulties
Client (or patient) is
never seen as a problem. A person and a problem are two different
things. Client is simply someone, who is facing certain difficulties
in their life. Therapist is never in superior position, he neither
gives a diagnosis, nor does he determine a treatment. His goal is to
create an environment, in which the clients themselves remain fully
competent, to deal with any situations they are confronted with in
their life.
Freedom from normative
standards
Narrative psychotherapy
does not work with psychiatric (or psychological) diagnoses, and does
not give them any importance. It makes no difference whether or not
the client's life corresponds to some general concepts. The only
thing important is what is meaningful and valuable for the clients
themselves.
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