Narrative Therapy
David M. Boje
June 30, 1999; Revised June 23, 2005
Part one applies it to storytelling organizations. The second part is an introduction to narrative therapy. This includes some definitions, its relation to stories and to deconstruction.
Part I - Narrative Therapy in Storytelling Organizaiton work
Excerpts From Boje, Alvarez & Schooling (2001)
"Narrative therapy (White & Epston, 1990) is increasingly being applied to organizational studies (Barry, 1997; Barry & Elmes, 1997; Boje et. al, 1997). Barry (1997) for example is applying narrative family therapy practices to organizationa l consulting. His application from family to organization might look at how stories are typically "problem-saturated" in dysfunctional organizations as they are in dysfunctional families. Narrative therapy assumes that people’s lives are stron gly influenced by their story sensemaking and that poor relations are embedded in the structure of these stories (Barry, 1997)."
Narrative therapy assumes each story is ideological and representation of reality is ideological (White, 1987: 148). While the stories are co-authored within a society, and within the context of organizations and family structures, there is much in li fe that is inconsistent, discrepant, incoherent, disharmonious, muddled and irrational. It is this excluded material that can be restoried, after deconstructive exploration (again White and Epston have their own interpretation of Derrida’s practices). Dec onstruction plays a role in loosening the grip of a dominant story.
In Western culture there is a dominant story about what it means to be a person of moral worth. This story emphasizes self-possession, self-containment, self-actualization and so on. It stresses individuality at the expense of community and independenc e at the expense of connection. These are culturally specific values which are presented as universal, "human" attributes to be striven for. The attempt to live up to these dominant prescriptions can have profoundly negative consequences for pe ople’s lives" (AHC, 1995: 19).
Deconstructions allows the dominant stories to be named and externalized (e.g. "put down stories," "injustice stories"), its hierarchy effects to be explored (e.g. loss of self-esteem): "Many Aboriginal people have had put on t hem negative stories about who they are" (AHC, 1995: 20). Narrative therapy reverses the claims (claiming strengths in face of domination), and the story to be restoried and resituated in preferred stories of being (reclaiming Aboriginal knowledges) .
Characterizations in dominant stories (e.g. the role of women in the workplace, rights of managers over workers) do not tell the complete story and distort people’s sense of self in debilitating ways. Narrative therapy addresses questions such as, "Wha t has been silent in the organization’s account of you?" "Can an alternative characterization of the self be told?"
An example may help illustrate the application. The Aboriginal Health Council put out a newsletter (1995) titled "Reclaiming Our Stories, Reclaiming Our Lives" (hereafter, AHC) The government was investigating pain and suffering of relatives of Aboriginal people who died in custody. The idea was to reclaim Aboriginal knowledges about ways to respond to grief and pain, to honor Aboriginal healing knowledge. Narrative therapy was "identified by Aboriginal health works in different parts o f Australia as more appropriate to Aboriginal culture than the more conventional Western mental health approaches" (AHC 1995: 3). Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal counselors trained in narrative therapy gathered with family groups to hear their stories and recommendations. For five days family groups (26 adults) told their stories of deaths in custody, effects on the family, the healing knowledge of those experiences in Aboriginal culture, and the context most appropriate to further discussion, includin g recommendations for future counseling services to Aboriginal people. Narrative therapists acted as facilitators for the small group discussions.
Reclaiming our stories, "the ability to share their own stores and hear other people’s stories" was identified as a major theme of the five day event" (AHC, 1995: 16). Present deaths are connected to past and present injustices, s uch that storytelling and hearing allows memories to be sifted to reclaim self-esteem. "Within the context of the camp, people felt freer to start remembering those things they wanted to remember about the people they had lost, rather than only remem bering the loss and the injustice" (AHC, 1995: 16). "Narrative therapy places a great deal of importance on finding ways in which an audience can be invited to play a part in authenticating and strengthening the preferred stories that are emerg ing in therapy" (AHC, 1995: 19). This includes finding people to contact who experience us in ways that manifest our preferred stories.
If you want to continue to explore Restorying, Click here for Large System Change work, Transorganizaitonal Restorying http://web.nmsu.edu/~dboje/TDstorytellingorg.html#part1main
PART II - Narrative Thearapy Web Links
If you are looking for overviews of narrative therapy in family counsiling, here are some choices:
Narrative Therapy Paul Abels, Ph.D. Sails October 8-11-1999
"The basic theme of Narrative Therapy is that "the person is not the problem, the problem is the problem." It is applicable for work with families, groups, individuals and communities. The approach developed by Michael White and David Epston h olds that the knowledge and stories (narratives) emanating from their culture, families and experiences shape persons."
Narrative Therapy One of the interesting areas of Narrative Therapy is the use of deconstruction. The narrative therapist is actively involved from the outset in delving into the meanings of the client's life.
Narrative Therapy is also quite postmodern. Narrative "Therapy is built on the notion that people are not the problem, but that th e relation a person has to a set of resources for making sense of their situation can position people 'in' problems. It allows people to confront the essentialisms in their stories."
Essentialism is most commonly understood as a belief in the real, true essence of things, the invariable and fixed properties which define the 'whatness' of a given entity (Fuss, 1989: xi).
Narrative Therapy has to de with learning to tell a different story of yourself. "Different stories are possible, even about the same events. How we talk about what happens to us depends on our starting point, and how we explain what happens to us depends on the questions we ask."
Narrative Therapy, then is "the idea that people's lives and relationships are shaped by the stories that people tell and engage in to gi ve meaning to their experiences. We construct certain habits and relationships that make up ways of life by staying true to these internalized stories. A "Narrative Therapist" assists persons to resolve problems by enabling them to deconstruct the meaning of the reality of their lives and relationships, and to show the difference between the reality and the internalized stories of self. The narrative therapist encourages clients to re-author their own lives according to alternative and preferred stories o f self-identity, and according to preferred ways of life."
Narrative Therapy is related to the Storytelling Organization Game in several ways.
If you landed on the formist narrative square, you already know that the critical theorists, postmodernists and poststructuralists object to the formist or structuralist analysis of narratives. It lacks a sense of political and economic context for th e critical theorists. Too essentialist for the postmodernists. As a poststructuralist, "Derrida claims these are no more
than philosophical fictions (based upon metaphors and metonymies that are 'read' as 'real'). The search for an 'essential reality' or 'origin' or 'truth' is futile, because (Pinkus, 1996):
….language bears within itself the necessity of its own critique, deconstructive criticism aims to show that any text inevitably undermines its own claims to have a determinate meaning, and licences the reader to produce his own meanings out of it by a n activity of semantic 'freeplay' (Derrida, 1978, in Lodge, 1988, p. 108).
References
AHC. 1995. "Reclaiming Our Stories, Reclaiming Our Lives." The Aboriginal Health Council newsletter. Obtained from David Epston restorying institute in New Zealand.
Barry, D. 1997. "Telling changes: From narrative family therapy to organizational change and development." Journal of Organizational Change Management. 10(1): 30-46.
Barry, D. & M. Elmes. 1997. "Strategy retold: Toward a narrative view of strategic discourse." Academy of Management Review, 22(2) 429-452.
Boje, David M., Alvarez, Rossana C. & Schooling, Bruce. 2001. Reclaiming story in organization: Narratologies and action sciences. In R. Westwood and S. Linstead (Eds.) The language of organization, pp. 132-175, Sage Publications: London.
Boje, D.M., Rosile, G, Dennehy, B, & Summers, D.1997. "Restorying reengineering: Some deconstructions and postmodern alternatives." Accepted for publication in Special Issue on Throwaway Employees, Journal of Communication Research.24(6): 631-668.
Journal of Pastoral Counseling Bibliography and Papers on Narrative Therapy.
White, M. 1991. "Deconstruction and therapy." Dulwich Centre Newsletter. 1, 6-46.
White, Michael, & David Epston. 1990. Narrative means to therapeutic ends. New York: W. W. Norton & Company,
If you want to continue to explore Restorying, Click here for Large System Change work, Transorganizaitonal Restorying http://web.nmsu.edu/~dboje/TDstorytellingorg.html#part1main