In the 1980s, based on family therapy, the therapeutic modality of narrative therapy began to emerge, whose main authors and advocates are Michael White and David Epson.
For some, it is considered a postmodern therapy, since White and Epson base part of their concentration on the approaches of the philosopher Michael Foucault (1978). One of the fundamental premises of this therapy is that each person, family or institution knows their identity. from the stories they create about the events they participated in.
- Michael White.
- An Australian social worker.
- And David Epson.
- A New Zealand anthropologist.
- Began working together and developed narrative therapy; however.
- The birth of this model cannot be explained without returning to the work of Gregory Bateson and those of Maturana and Varela.
- Who emphasized that the individual is never alone.
- But belongs to social systems.
Thinking about the individual in this context has contributed to the maturation of systemic therapies that serve the entire family system, or to some members or individuals alone, depending on the time, the more important the actors involved in the therapy, the shorter and more effective it is, giving rise to many models of short therapy.
It is common to see how family members feel affected by the problem, but do not feel worried about the problem, so the first step is this conceptual change, from the point of view, in which the implication and, therefore, the influence capacity are involved.
The attitude of each family member is very important, because if we can put ourselves in the shoes of others, we can better build what is happening in reality, so the first step is not to blame anyone and understand how each person influences. The problem.
Narrative therapy sees the problem separate from the person and makes it easier to understand an idea: does each person have certain values, commitments, attitudes?They help reduce the negative influence of the problem on the entire dynamics of the person, family or institution. Techniques such as negotiating and discussing viable alternatives are used to find new forms of solution.
Narrative therapy replaces the cyber approach of the human being with a linguistic model, which affirms that knowledge is a consensual version of reality, the product of interpersonal interaction and negotiation, and that meaning is created in the context of the discourse that underpins it.
Therefore, our personal history, culture and organizations of which we are a part are closely linked to our actions and to what we build in relationships, in this way we organize the experiments in the form of narrative, with a temporal sequence, intentions. , meanings, results?
Therefore, narrative therapy understands therapy as a conversational process, in which clients and therapists jointly build new meanings, stories, possibilities and solutions to the problem they are telling. The main premises of narrative therapy are as follows:
Michael White has put a lot of emphasis on dramatic structure as an agent of influence in building our relationships, because people join events on a subject, but there are always other stories left out.
Therefore, the therapist’s mission is to try to save subjugated or invisible stories in the most accessible narrative that the person manages, to recover facts or thoughts that restore the lost balance.
Do certain stories in our lives become dominant, restrictive, leading us to conclusions that repeatedly punish us?
Thus, when people arrive in consultation with a dominant story saturated with problems, therapeutic work focuses on finding entry points to alternative stories, for example, generating questions that invite the person to connect with experiences they had omitted in building their story.
The approach to Narrative Therapy created by Michael White and David Epson sees problems as something separate from the person (outsourcing problems), making it easier to rewrite lives and relationships, so it is possible to create a space for people to act on the problem and make room for their skills, interests, commitments, responsibilities, contributing to personal development and , therefore, to a more effective adaptation.
Silvia Roxana (2011). Short Therapies: the proposal of Michael White and David Epston. III International Congress of Research and Professional Practice in Psychology XVIII Research Days Seventh Meeting of Researchers in Psychologa of MERCOSUR. Faculty of Psychology?University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires.