Re-authoring stories of self: how narrative therapy works

Volume 11 Number 3 March 9 - April 12 2015

 

Katherine Smith speaks with Social Work’s Professor Louise Harms about the rise in interest in narrative therapy from training as well as therapeutic perspectives.

Anyone who has ever sat with a therapist will be familiar with the rather clichéd question ‘Tell me about your childhood’.

But recounting seminal moments in the story of a person’s life has a critical role to play, by revealing to the therapist the dominant themes and crucial relationships that exist and often persist for the therapy-seeker.

A relatively new form of therapy known as Narrative Therapy, pioneered in Australia by Adelaide psychotherapist Michael White, seeks to help people re-author personal stories that may not be helpful in an individual’s life.

At the University of Melbourne a new Masters of Narrative Therapy and Community Work has proved enormously popular since it was introduced in 2014.

Social Work’s Professor Louise Harms says 51 students enrolled in the program last year.

“Narrative Therapy is proving very popular among people from areas where people are struggling to recover from the trauma of war and conflict,” Professor Harms says, citing Narrative Therapy’s use to support children in a Palestine trauma centre.

“Where community recovery from trauma is needed, or where intervention, recovery and resistance are required, Narrative Therapy can play a powerful role. It’s also often used to work with people who’ve experienced sexual assault, trauma or loss, torture and who have a range of conditions and illnesses. Some significant success has been had in working with people with anorexia.

“Students taking our course report feeling empowered by their learning, and able to return to their communities as practitioners trained to help liberate people from stories of oppression and to reconnect with moments of strength.

“In that way it’s quite a political therapeutic act, which challenges broader cultural stories,” she says.

As a ‘post-modern’ approach to therapy Professor Harms says a key feature of Narrative Therapy is its validation of human rights and social justice.

“Narrative Therapy challenges dominant forces and norms that may be oppressive and so for instance has been useful in dealing with transgender and gay rights issues. It allows the therapy seeker to work with the therapist to change the discourse around problems an individual may be experiencing.

“The mantra of Narrative Therapy is ‘The person isn’t the problem, the problem is the problem,’ and it acknowledges that people are the experts in their own lives and have the ability to change their relationship with problems,” Professor Harms says.

“By externalising problems rather than seeing them as a part of a person’s nature, for instance talking about depression troubling a person rather than a person being depressed, therapist and client can come to an inherent belief in optimism, confident that a problem can be addressed, and that life can be different.”

The Master of Narrative Therapy and Community Work is offered in partnership with the Dulwich Centre in Adelaide, and open to students with qualifications in a cognate discipline (including but not restricted to nursing, psychology, social work, teaching, and medicine) and some relevant work experience.

 

www.commercial.unimelb.edu.au/narrativetherapy