Introduction and Assumptions
Narrative therapy is more of an approach than a defined theory (O’Connor et al. 1997). This approach works from the premise that each person’s life is a series of stories on many levels similar to a novel with many chapters. Stories are used to make meaning of a situation and to make sense of one’s life. Some of these stories and chapters are given to the person by family, context, culture, religion, gender, etc. One of the key aspects of narrative is to re-author one’s own story so that one is not living a story that does not fit with one’s identity. In narrative therapy, a person and/or family seeks therapy when there is a problem that cannot be fixed. In fact, there is a story around a problem that oppresses the family. This story about the problem also fits into the larger stories about oneself.
In terms of its philosophical underpinnings, narrative therapy is a postmodern approach (White and Epston 1990; White 2007). Stories are socially constructed...
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O’Connor, T.S.J. (2020). Narrative Therapy. In: Leeming, D.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24348-7_455
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