Narrative Therapy: Making Meaning, Making Lives PDF
Preview Narrative Therapy: Making Meaning, Making Lives
FM-Brown(Postmodern)-45011.qxd 7/10/2006 11:15 AM Page i NARRATIVE THERAPY FM-Brown(Postmodern)-45011.qxd 7/10/2006 11:15 AM Page ii FM-Brown(Postmodern)-45011.qxd 7/10/2006 11:15 AM Page iii NARRATIVE THERAPY Making Meaning, Making Lives Catrina Brown Dalhousie University Tod Augusta-Scott Bridges-A Domestic Violence, Counseling, Research, and Training Institute Editors FM-Brown(Postmodern)-45011.qxd 7/10/2006 11:15 AM Page iv Copyright © 2007 by Sage Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information: Sage Publications, Inc. 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 E-mail: [email protected] Sage Publications Ltd. 1 Oliver’s Yard 55 City Road London EC1Y 1SP United Kingdom Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd. B-42, Panchsheel Enclave Post Box 4109 New Delhi 110 017 India Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Narrative Therapy: Making Meaning, Making Lives/[editied by] Cartina Brown, Tod Augusta-Scott. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-4129-0987-2 (cloth)—ISBN 1-4129-0988-0 (pbk.) 1. Narrative therapy. I. Brown, Cartina. II. Augusta-Scott, Tod. RC489.S74N42 2007 616.89′165—dc22 2006008435 This book is printed on acid-free paper. 06 07 08 09 10 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Acquiring Editor: Kassie Graves Editorial Assistant: Veronica Novak Production Editor: Beth A. Bernstein Copy Editor: Carla Freeman Typesetter: C&M Digitals (P) Ltd. Indexer: Rick Hurd Cover Designer: Candice Harman FM-Brown(Postmodern)-45011.qxd 7/10/2006 11:15 AM Page v Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction: Postmodernism, Reflexivity, and Narrative Therapy ix Catrina Brown and Tod Augusta-Scott Part I: Writing in the Social 1. Situating Knowledge and Power in the Therapeutic Alliance 3 Catrina Brown 2. Re-Storying Women’s Depression: A Material-Discursive Approach 23 Michelle N. Lafrance and Janet M. Stoppard 3. The Blinding Power of Genetics: Manufacturing and Privatizing Stories of Eating Disorders 39 Karin Jasper 4. A Poetics of Resistance: Compassionate Practice in Substance Misuse Therapy 59 Colin James Sanders 5. Practicing Psychiatry Through a Narrative Lens: Working With Children, Youth, and Families 77 Normand Carrey Part II: Self-Surveillance: Normalizing Practices of Self 6. Discipline and Desire: Regulating the Body/Self 105 Catrina Brown 7. Watching the Other Watch: A Social Location of Problems 133 Stephen Madigan FM-Brown(Postmodern)-45011.qxd 7/10/2006 11:15 AM Page vi 8. Internalized Homophobia: Lessons From the Mobius Strip 151 Glenda M. Russell Part III: Challenging Essentialism 9. Dethroning the Suppressed Voice: Unpacking Experience as Story 177 Catrina Brown 10. Conversations With Men About Women’s Violence: Ending Men’s Violence by Challenging Gender Essentialism 197 Tod Augusta-Scott 11. Challenging Essentialist Anti-Oppressive Discourse: Uniting Against Racism and Sexism 211 Tod Augusta-Scott Part IV: Re-Authoring Preferred Identities 12. Movement of Identities: A Map for Therapeutic Conversations About Trauma 229 Jim Duvall and Laura Béres 13. Letters From Prison: Re-Authoring Identity With Men Who Have Perpetrated Sexual Violence 251 Tod Augusta-Scott 14. Talking Body Talk: Merging Feminist and Narrative Approaches to Practice 269 Catrina Brown Index 303 About the Editors 321 About the Contributors 323 FM-Brown(Postmodern)-45011.qxd 7/10/2006 11:15 AM Page vii Acknowledgments W e would like to thank all of the contributing authors in this project for their thoughtful work. We also appreciate all that we have learned and continue to learn from our clients. I (Catrina) want to thank Sarah Larsen, Shauna Melanson, and Elizabeth Stephen for the child care and support they offered during the work on this book. I want to acknowledge Zoe for her willingness to relinquish her mummy, however ambivalently, to this project. Special thanks to Tod for our many engaging conversations. Tod’s graciousness, generosity, and flexi- bility allowed for the tremendous ease with which we were able to work together. Finally, I am thankful to my parents, who both demonstrated and encouraged thoughtful critical engagement with the world. I (Tod) want to thank the many readers who reviewed my work for this project. Specifically, I appreciate the thoughtful feedback of Chris Augusta- Scott, Tionda Cain, Alan Jenkins, and Penny Moore. I especially want to thank Catrina for inspiring me with her intellect, rigor, and bravery, with which she disrupts dominant discourses. I also want to extend my appreciation for those who have worked with Bridges, a domestic violence counseling, research, and training institute. Specifically, I want to extend my appreciation to my colleagues Marilee Burwash-Brennan, Art Fisher, and Sara Lamb, for their creativity and inno- vations in developing narrative ideas and practices in our work. Finally, I want to express my sincere gratitude to the volunteer board of directors at Bridges: Blanchard Atkinson, Dan Criss, Jeff Hunt, Nathalie Jamieson, Eric Johnson, Mark Scales, and Debbie Walker, for their vision and courage to support narrative ideas and practices in the field of domestic violence. vii FM-Brown(Postmodern)-45011.qxd 7/10/2006 11:15 AM Page viii FM-Brown(Postmodern)-45011.qxd 7/10/2006 11:15 AM Page ix Introduction Postmodernism, Reflexivity, and Narrative Therapy Catrina Brown and Tod Augusta-Scott R ooted in social constructionism and emerging initially from family ther- apy, narrative therapy emphasizes the idea that we live storied lives (White, 1995). Within this approach, we seek to make sense of our lives and experiences by ascribing meaning through stories, which themselves arise within social conversations and culturally available discourses. From this view, our stories do not simply represent us or mirror lived events—they constitute us, shaping our lives and our relationships. The narrative metaphor conveys the idea that stories organize, structure, and give meaning to events in our lives and help us make sense of our experiences. Stories are transmitted largely through socially mediated language and social interac- tion within specific cultural and historical contexts. The meanings that we attach to events are thus never singular, individual, or simply subjective, never outside the social, but have shared or intersubjective meaning within a cultural nexus of power and knowledge. Influenced by feminist, postmodern, and critical theory, this book con- tributes to the field of narrative therapy by offering a critical discussion of the often unexamined epistemological contradictions evident in therapeu- tic work that remains, however ambivalently, positioned in modernism. Michael White’s (1995, 2000a, 2000b, 2001; White & Epston, 1990) view that stories must not only be told and retold, but reconstructed, has shaped our approach to narrative therapy. A creator of narrative therapy, White (1994) isclear that there are no neutral stories. Not only are there no neutral stories, there is no neutral hearing of stories. He advocates a therapeutic ix
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