Narrative Therapy: the form of psychotherapy based on the patient’s life stories

Do you know the theoretical and practical bases of Narrative Therapy?

You have probably noticed that, depending on the way in which a story is explained to us, we value the characters involved in it in one way or another and we judge the nature of the problem posed in these narratives in a different way.

Works of fiction such as Rant: The Life of a Murderer or the movie Memento explore the possibilities through which the narrative form can affect the content of what is being told, the way in which the behind-the-scenes of the story is portrayed, the way in which the story is told, and the way in which the story is told.The way of portraying the moral background of the characters or even the kind of antagonisms that are present in these stories.

However, it is easy to tell events in various ways when the author can hide information about key moments from us. What happens, however, when we are the narrator? Are we capable of both generating and experiencing the different ways in which we can narrate our lives?

There is a type of psychotherapy that not only answers this last question in the affirmative, but also moves this potentiality to the core of its therapeutic proposal. It is called Narrative Therapy.

What is Narrative Therapy?

Narrative Therapy is a type of therapy in which the client (usually called "co-author"), and not the therapist, is assumed to be the expert on the client's life story..

It is also known to be a form of therapy in which the use of letters, invitations, and written personal accounts, both about the client's life and those things that refer to the course of therapy, is proposed, not as a way of providing information to the therapist, but as part of the treatment of the client's problems, but as part of the treatment of the client's problems..

Michael White and David Epston, the pioneers of this kind of psychotherapy.

This form of therapy was first developed by therapists Michael White and David Epston, the pioneers of this kind of psychotherapy. Michael White y David Epstonwho made their proposals internationally known through the publication of the book Narrative Means to Therapeutic Endsalthough it was not their first work on the subject. Together they laid a theoretical foundation that decades later would be further developed by others..

Nowadays there are several proposals for approaching therapy that can be framed within the limits of Narrative Therapy. However, if we want to understand what Narrative Therapy is, we can hardly do it from a description of its techniques. We must also talk about the cosmovision from which it starts, its philosophical bases. philosophical bases.

Narrative Therapy as the fruit of postmodernity.

The postmodern philosophy has crystallized into different ways of thinking, many of which influence the way in which the inhabitants of Western countries think about reality today. All these styles of thought inherited from postmodernity have in common, on the one hand, the notion that there are different ways of explaining the same thing, and on the other, the idea that there are different ways of explaining the same thing. different ways of explaining one and the same thing, and on the other, that of theon the other, the of the non-existence of a single valid explanation.. It is assumed that our bodies are not made to perceive and internalize reality as it is given in nature, and that in order to interact with the environment we must construct for ourselves narratives about how the world works.

This is what the thinker Alfred Korzybsky called the relationship between map and territory. relationship between map and territory. It is impossible for each one of us to imagine the planet Earth with all its details, and that is why we have to relate to this terrain by creating mental abstractions that our minds can handle: maps. Of course, there are many possible maps that can represent the same area, and although their use may be practical for us, it does not mean that we know the territory itself.

Narrative Therapy starts from these philosophical assumptions and places the client or co-author of the therapies at the center of the focus of the sessions. The client is not a subject who merely provides information for the therapist to generate a diagnosis and a treatment program, but rather the two work together to weave a useful and useful way for the client and therapist to work together. both work to weave together a useful and adaptive way of presenting the client's life story.

Understanding Narrative Therapy

Human beings, as agents who create narratives, we live life through several stories that contradict each other at many points of friction.. At a given moment one may be more important, and for other aspects another may be predominant.

The important thing is that, from the philosophical background of Narrative Therapy, there is no narrative that has the power to totally suppress the others, although there are stories to which we pay more attention than others in certain contexts and given certain conditions. That is why we will always be able to generate alternative stories to explain, both to others and to ourselves, what is happening to us..

For all of the above, Narrative Therapy proposes a therapeutic approach in which the client's experiences are challenged and reformulated through the recounting of events.The aim of this type of therapy is not to provide a way to access "reality" (something inaccessible if we assume the postmodern postulates), but the possibility of opening up the history in which the person will be able to perceive reality.

This type of therapy does not seek a way to access "reality" (something inaccessible if we assume the postulates of postmodernity), but the possibility of opening the story in which the person narrates his or her experiences in order to generate alternative narratives in which the problem does not "soak" everything. If there is a problem that disturbs the way in which the client experiences his or her life, Narrative Therapy proposes to to create the possibility that the dominant narrative in which the present conception of the problem is installed loses prominence in favor of other alternative narratives..

Externalization of the problem

In Narrative Therapy, ways of relating the problem are promoted as if it were something that, in itself, does not define the person's identity. This is done so that the problem does not become the "filter" through which all those things that we perceive pass (something that would only feed the discomfort and make it perpetuate over time). In this way, by externalizing the problem, it is introduced into the narrative of the person's life as if it were just another element, something separate from the person him/herself..

This objective can be achieved through the use of externalizing language. externalizing language. By linguistically separating the problem and the person's self-conception, the latter is empowered to express narratives in which the experience of the problem is experienced differently.

Narrative thinking

Narratives are the placement of a series of narrated events in a time frame so that they make sense and lead us from the introduction of a story to the resolution of the story.

Every narrative has certain elements that define it as such: a specific location, a time span during which the events take place, actors, a problem, objectives and actions that move the story forward.. According to psychologists such as Jerome Bruner, narrative is one of the discursive forms most present in our approach to reality.

Narrative Therapy is born, among other things, from the distinction between the logical-scientific thinking and narrative thinking. While the former serves to bring veracity to things based on a series of arguments, narrative thinking brings realism to events by placing them in a time frame, narrative thinking brings realism to events by placing them in a time frame and creating a story out of them.. That is to say: while logical-scientific thinking investigates abstract laws about the functioning of the environment, narratives deal with the particularities of concrete experience, changing points of view and the attachment of facts to a given space and time.

Narrative Therapy ascribes to narrative thinking so that both the therapist and the client can deal one-on-one with the experiences related and negotiate between them the elaboration of these specific and plausible stories.

The role of the therapist in Narrative Therapy

The client is the ultimate expert on his or her experiences, and this protagonism is reflected in the approach used during Narrative Therapy. It is understood that only the person who attends the consultation can implement an alternative narrative to the one he/she is already living, since he/she is the one who has direct access to his/her experiences. and furthermore.

The therapist who implements Narrative Therapy is guided by two main precepts, is guided by two main precepts:

1. Remain in a state of curiosity.

2. To ask questions to which one does not really know the answer..

Thus, the role of the co-author is to generate the story of his or her life, while the therapist acts as a facilitating agent by asking the right questions and bringing up particular issues. In this way, the problem is dissolved into an alternative narrative.

Other guidelines followed by therapists working with Narrative Therapy are:

• Facilitating the establishment of a therapeutic relationship in which their own point of view is not imposed on the client.

• Actively work to recognize the narrative style style in which the client's story unfolds.

• See to it that your input is designed to be picked up and reformulated by the client, not simply accepted.not simply to be accepted by the client.

• Accept the client's complaints about the sessions and not take them as a sign of ignorance or misunderstanding.

• Recognize those alternative narratives in which the in which the problem is losing weight.

Non-blaming the client

In Narrative Therapy it is assumed the possibility of narrating an experience in many different ways (necessarily generating several experiences where only one seemed to exist before), giving the client the maximum power to generate his or her narrative about what is happening to him or her and not blaming him or her for the difficulties that arise.

From this approach closed or exclusive discourses about what is happening are rejected, and the need to create narratives open to change is emphasized.This flexibility will allow the person to introduce changes, to give importance to some facts and de-emphasize others. It is understood that where there is a feeling of guilt originating in therapy, there is a perception of not knowing how to adapt to a narrative thread that is given from outside, which means that the client has not been involved in its generation.

Summarizing

In short, Narrative Therapy is a framework of relationships between therapist and client (co-author) in which the latter has the power to generate alternative narratives. has the power to generate alternative narratives of what is happening to him/her, so that he/she is not limited by his/her perception of the problems.. The theory related to this therapeutic approach is prolific in methods and strategies to facilitate the emergence of these alternative narratives and, of course, its explanation far exceeds the pretensions deposited in this article.

I invite you, if you find this topic interesting, to do your own research and start, for example, by reading some of the works listed in the bibliography section.

Bibliographical references:

• Bruner, L. (1987). Life as Narrative. Social Research , 54(1), pp. 11 - 32.
• White and Epston (1993). Narrative media for therapeutic purposes. Barcelona: Paidós.
• White, M. (2002). The narrative approach in the experience of therapists. Barcelona: Gedisa.