Narrative Family Therapy

Key Concepts:

1. Personal experience can be understood only through awareness of the process that organizes elements of the experience.
2. All personal experience is ambiguous, it has multiple understandings and interpretations.
3. Symbolic interactionism – reality is what you believe it to be
4. The self is plastic and fluid, influenced by narratives and stories we tell.
5. All people have good intentions, they do not want or need problems.

Therapy Strategies:

1. Listen to the “words” people use to describe their experiences.
2. Focus on asking individuals questions about the past and their interpretation of the past.
3. Try to objectify and personify the problem – no one person is to blame.
4. Externalize the problem (e.g., rather than “She is depressed”, “_____ is making her depressed”).
5. Help the family develop alternative, empowering stories separate from the problem.
6. Shift the attention away from the search for pathology toward an appreciation of the toxic effects of the cultural narratives – stories of society that are often rigid and closed causing people to become vulnerable and helpless to them.
7. Rewrite stories that are interfering with life.

 Techniques:

1. First, put the problem in a narrative stage (have family tell stories).
2. Focus on the “Effects” of the problem, not the “Problem” itself.
3. Use deconstructing questions.
4. Find exceptions or partial triumphs over the affliction and instances of effective action by the family.
5. Ask questions geared to uncovering unique outcomes, preferred outcomes.
6. Recruit support for new, more positive narratives of stories.
7. Use public ritual or group support to reinforce new narrative or story.
8. For clients to maintain their new stories, they need support through documentation, community, family.

 Key Terms:

1. Symbolic interactionism
2. Rewriting
3. Stories
4. Narratives
5. Externalize problem
6. Empower