Michael White published Maps of Narrative Practice in 2007. Since then, this book has been translated into many languages. Other maps - and metaphors for narrative practice -are being developed. We include authors' manuscripts from Shona Russell and Maggie Carey. Some of these videos are in the online course An introduction to Rich Story Development. Others are from Ummeed Child Development Center. Do you have anything you would like to contribute?
David Epston reflects on the future of narrative therapy, and imagines a meeting with Michael White. "To start all over again."
Narrative practitioners often seek to incorporate audiences in efforts such as letter-writing campaigns, outsider witness practices, reflecting teamwork, Tree of Life gatherings, ‘reclaiming community, and other community rituals. We listen for resonance toward making links across shared themes, seeking solidarity and building on family and community resourcefulness. Below we've included several materials by marcela polanco and Maggie Carey. We invite you to send some of your own contributions. Colouring Narrative [...]
As follow-up to an earlier conversation (Psychotherapy Networker Conference, 2003), Michael exchanged with Salvador Minuchin at The Evolution of Psychotherapy Conference (2005). Salvador insisted that there was something more guiding Michael's practice than following maps of narrative practice. David Epston David wrote further about Michael's approach to improvisation in his Introduction to Michael's Narrative Practice: Continuing the Conversation (2011), edited by David Denborough. Here we'd like to highlight initiatives that combine skill-building and improvisation.
Narrative practices have evolved in many ways over the decades in response to changing professional, social and cultural contexts. Michael White - and David Epston- gave voice to the hope and intention that we would continue to try out different modes of inquiry, come up with new practices, and integrate these cherished ways of being with people that fit with our own local experiences and socio-political contexts. What are considerations in integrating other approaches with a Narrative Approach ethically, philosophically and practically? Here we show a few thoughtful developments - and welcome more.
How can we honor cherished ideas and practices from Narrative therapy while also learning from new developments in the field of neuroscience? Please help us build this page!
As the counterpoint to Michael White’s Outsider Witness Practices, Insider Witness Practices (IWP) represent a dramatic re-imagination of narrative therapy practice through the use of performance. David Epston, Tom Stone Carlson - and others- are currently exploring, researching and performing these practices, with intent to return narrative therapy to its very beginnings; a history for the future. Through a one-session performance, clients become witnesses to a hope-biased portrayal of their lives as performed by their therapist. This portrayal is intended to situate the significant events of clients’ lives within rich story lines that serve as a revelation of their moral character as persons. As a result, clients become both an insider and outsider to their own lived experiences and are afforded the unusual opportunity to experience their own selves as if they were an ‘other.’ From this insider/outsider vantage point, they are able to experience heightened levels of meaning making, self-compassion and self-appreciation. The results in this experimental IWP approach have so far have exceeded participants’ wildest expectations.
Maggie Carey shows how to build on The Statement of Position Map to guide responding to the problem story, exploring the effects, creating reflecting surfaces and asking why. We briefly show how responding to the problem story can be a pathway to discover the preferred story. These illustrations are from the online course, An Introduction to Rich Story Development. Double Listening in Narrative Therapy We introduce the narrative [...]
How does narrative practice render more visible a person’s preferred account of identity while making links with doing and experiencing? Here we offer a number of videos from Maggie Carey's online, An Introduction to Rich Story Development. As taught by Michael White, Maggie Carey shows how she enters into a person’s conceptual landscape of meaning, attending to categories of meaning or identity. Additionally, she pays close attention to the particularities of the doing and experiencing- listening for initiatives, [...]
We begin with Pediatrics, EMDR, Mindfulness Practices and Narrative Psychiatry. What would you like to add?
The Journal of Narrative Family Therapy (JNFT) is a free online journal, dedicated to re-imagining the future of narrative family therapy practice in a unique collaborative, anti-journal format. Edited by David Epston, Tom Carlson and marcela polanco.
Peggy Sax, at Vermont Educator's Camp in June 2017, illustrates the ways using technology to augment the possibilities in creating a Teaching ColLABoratory can be a counterstory to the narrative of technology as frustrating and distracting, and how reauthoringteaching.com has become an innovative, online learning community with a focus on Higher Education.