Narrative Family Therapy

Family Counseling Approaches – Narrative Therapy

Samantha Southall

Liberty University

Abstract

The crux of Narrative Therapy focuses on helping clients gain access to preferred story lines about their lives and identities and dismiss previous negative and/or self-defeating narratives about themselves. An overview of the Social Construction Model, Narrative Therapy, is presented, as well as notions surrounding poststrucuralism, deconstructionism, self-narratives, cultural narratives, therapeutic conversations, ceremonies, letters and leagues and several aspects of narrative therapy. This paper will thoroughly explore logic of narrative therapy in addition to aforementioned concepts in order to help readers with or without knowledge on the subject to understand exactly what it is, and what it seeks to do. These aspects will be conceptually defined and explained in a way that separates each, but also relates them all in understandable terms. In order to provide insight regarding personal integration of faith in this family counseling approach, a discussion of faith and integration will ensue, with references to sources that guide the intended process of integration.

Introduction

Narrative therapy is a therapeutic approach that falls within the Social Construction Model. The therapist, in narrative therapy, is not necessarily central to the process; rather he/she serves influentially to the client. The therapist helps clients remove focus from negative narratives that have defined their lives. These narratives are replaced with future positive stories that can re-define their lives. In doing so, the therapist helps the client internalize and create new stories within him/herself and draw new assumptions about him/herself by opening up to varied stories to be told in the future. Narrative therapists seek to distinctly distinguish the client from the problem, because the two are not one in the same. Externalizing the problem is usually how therapy...