2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
Narrative approach a relatively young trend in modern psychotherapy and psychological counseling. It originated at the turn of the 70-80s of the XX century in Australia and New Zealand. The founders of the approach are Michael White and David Epston.
By the time they met, each of these psychologists already had some of their own ideas, the combination and further development of which led to the emergence of a new direction in psychology.
Michael and David consulted couples and individuals together, sometimes for several hours a day, and then vigorously discussed what they had done and what it had led to. This shared passion for work laid the foundation for the narrative approach.
The narrative approach is considered a magical solution to all problems for a reason
How can, by asking simple questions, solve a difficult question, cure a patient, restore harmony in a relationship?
Magic, and more! What's the secret?
Narrative (English and French narrative, from Lat. Narrare - to tell, narrate. Narrative therapy is a conversation during which people "retell", that is, tell in a new way, the stories of their lives. For narrative therapists, "history" is certain events linked in certain sequences at a certain time interval and thus brought into a state of a plot endowed with meaning.
We learn our life experience through stories. Since people are not able to remember absolutely everything that happens to them, they build logical chains between individual events and sensations. And these sequences become stories. We are not born with these stories. They are created by social and political ties.
Any events in your life (both small and large) add up to a certain sequence. In all alternations, a theme is traced that is associated with you. There are stories where you are decisive and where you are secretive, where you are smart and where you feel that you are not knowledgeable enough … There are a lot of these stories! And at the same time, you perceive yourself in one specific way.
When a patient comes to a narrative therapist, in most cases he tells a problem story. On the one hand, the psychologist listens to the story of a person, and on the other, he tries to find something in him that does not fit into this problem story at all, to find something positive. This "something" the narrative practitioner begins to work through and develop, but already in a new story.
So, a characteristic feature of the narrative approach can be considered the expression: "A person is not a problem, a problem is a problem."
The basic idea of narrative practice is that all people are okay. It's just that from time to time a problem comes to a person from the outside and violates something very important for him: values, goals, hopes.
The essence of the narrative approach can be reduced to 3 main actions of a specialist.
1. Separation of a person's life from his problems (externalization)
2. Challenge to those “problematic” life stories that people perceive as dominant, subordinate.
3. To rewrite the problem history of a person to an alternative one in accordance with his preferences.
How does the narrative approach work? Why can a story told by a narrative specialist lead to positive changes in a person's life?
A narrative practitioner is a specialist who listens to a person's stories and asks questions to him. He is an expert in asking questions. Because a person himself has the correct solution to his problems, and not a narrative or any other practitioner.
Differences between the narrative approach and other practices adopted in the classical psychotherapy we are accustomed to:
1. The task of the psychotherapist is to induce your unconscious to work for you. The classical theory of the human soul believes that your unconscious "knows" everything, it is in it that the problem arises. In narrative practice, it is believed that values, knowledge, skills and abilities, as well as past experience, and not something abstract sitting in your head, help you first of all. In this practice, it is believed that a person has everything he needs to cope with his problem, since he is active, reacting to infringement of his values.
2. It is generally accepted that in ordinary psychology a person with problems is, as it were, "unwell", something is wrong with him, he has a "terrible character", "neurosis", "mania" and so on. The narrative practitioner perceives the interlocutor as healthy. In general, he is fine by himself, it is just that sometimes problems come to him in the form of Anxiety, Anxiety, Bad Mood … and they start to ruin his life. And that's when the person just needs extra help.
3. According to the classical scenario, the psychologist is mainly interested in what the person is feeling at the moment. Narrative practices are always based on human actions. Their main question is: what are you doing? Using the narrative, the specialist determines the basic values, hopes, dreams of a person and helps him to rewrite his history, in which problems are under control or disappear altogether.
What they turn to a narrative therapist with:
- Family: relationship in a couple, between spouses and their children, relatives.
- Individual counseling. Intrapersonal: problems of personal self-esteem and low efficiency, lack of goals, feelings of guilt and resentment are removed.
- Social problems with oppression and violation of human rights, during rehabilitation work with victims of various forms of violence, work with victims of natural disasters.
- Organizational: building good relationships in communities and organizations, learning to avoid conflict.
- Also, narrative therapy is provided to people with fatal diseases. And the results are impressive! People gain inner freedom, even if the disease itself does not disappear. They learn not to survive with her, but to live!
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