Narrative

Overview

Narrative Therapy is a poststructural and social constructionist approach developed principally by Michael White and David Epston during the 1980s.

Rather than locating problems within individuals, Narrative Therapy understands identity as being constructed through stories, relationships, language and culture.

Therapy focuses on helping people separate themselves from problems, recognise overlooked experiences and develop preferred stories that better reflect their values, intentions and relationships.

Narrative Therapy is collaborative, non-pathologising and strongly influenced by the work of Michel Foucault, Gregory Bateson and Jerome Bruner.

Central assumptions

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Narrative Therapy assumes that:

identity is socially constructed
people live through stories
problems are separate from people
language shapes reality
knowledge and power are interconnected
culture influences identity
people continually resist problems
preferred stories already exist within lived experience

Theory of change

In Narrative Therapy, change happens through re-authoring — a shift from a dominant, problem-saturated story to a preferred story, built from previously unnoticed unique outcomes and made durable through rich, connected description and an audience who witnesses and helps sustain it.

The therapist does not supply the new story. They ask questions that separate the person from the problem, notice moments the dominant story cannot account for, and help those moments develop into a fuller, thicker alternative — one the person recognises as truer to their own values and intentions than the story that brought them to therapy.

Change may happen through:

externalising, which separates the problem from identity and frees the person to examine and resist it
unique outcomes, which supply the raw material a dominant story has no room for
thickening the plot, which makes a preferred story vivid, connected across time, and durable enough to survive future challenges
outsider witnessing and therapeutic documents, which extend the new story into social and relational life rather than leaving it as private insight
deconstructing dominant discourses, which reveals a problem's power as historically and culturally produced rather than natural, personal or permanent
re-membering, which revises a person's relationship with significant others, living or dead, in ways that support the preferred story

This links strongly with:

Foundations

The school integrates ideas from:

Poststructural philosophy
Social constructionism
Systems theory
Anthropology
Literary theory

Knowledge structure

Foundational Concepts

Core Concepts

Wider Narrative concepts

Narrative Methods

Meeting people and externalising the problem

Developing alternative and preferred stories

Documentation, witnessing and community

Wider narrative practice

Narrative Techniques

Externalising and mapping

Statement of position and evaluation

Unique outcomes and re-authoring

Scaffolding and distance

Witnessing, documents and therapist style

Therapeutic aims

Narrative Therapy seeks to help people:

separate themselves from problems
recognise their responses to adversity
reconnect with personal values
develop preferred identities
strengthen meaningful relationships
challenge oppressive discourses
create richer stories for the future

Major contributors

Related epistemologies

Critique and contemporary use

Narrative Therapy has been highly influential across systemic and community practice, but it also requires careful, reflexive use.

Possible critiques include:

externalising, used too individually, can underestimate material constraints such as poverty, racism, violence or institutional power that a story alone cannot re-author away
the therapist's own influence in helping co-author a "preferred" story can be underacknowledged, presenting a jointly-made account as though it were simply discovered
the strongly verbal, language-based approach can be less accessible for some people and contexts unless deliberately adapted
outsider witnessing requires careful facilitation, or the audience's response can inadvertently centre itself over the person whose story is being witnessed
an emphasis on preferred stories can tip into a celebratory tone that avoids difficult, unresolved or genuinely painful material

Contemporary Narrative practice is strongest when it is combined with:

Narrative ideas should support careful, ethical and collaborative practice, not replace attention to material conditions, safety or accountability.

Related pathways

Narrative pathway

Version status

Version 2.0 — rebuilt as a complete inventory in the shared school-page frame, following the Milan model: full concept, method and technique inventories, Theory of change and Critique and contemporary use sections in place.

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Review status
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