#david epston

[geoxx-carrboro]

Fracturism - Chapter 2 - The Self Is a Constructed Necessity - By Geox

Prelude · Meeting the Mirror That Speaks Back Stand, just for a moment, in front of the bathroom mirror at dawn. No coffee, no phone-light glow, no curated playlist to cue your mood—only the half-lit impression that wavers between sleep and daylight. Ask the face staring back: Who, exactly, woke up this morning? Neuroscientists will tell you that ninety-five percent of what you are about to do…

Fracturism - Chapter 2 - The Self Is a Constructed Necessity - By Geox

[shrinkrants]

“Narrative practice” (as it has come to be known) refuses those boundaries that would assign certain people to positions of fundamental passivity, and seeks to embody the belief that all authorship is co-authorship – that the most natural and appropriate form of story-telling is “multi-storied”, seeking not only to acknowledge but to activate and live forward from multiple possibilities which can only be discovered by embracing a radical diversity of points of view. Formulated in the 1970s and 1980s by two social workers, the Australian Michael White and the New Zealander David Epston, it is explicitly driven by a commitment to justice, both epistemic and social. In this, they were largely influenced not only by constructivist psychology, feminism(s) and postmodern theories of power, but above all by what they learned from their collaborators as they sought to establish concrete forms of equality and orient to the co-production of knowledge and practices – in particular through White’s work alongside Aboriginal colleagues and communities in Australia. --Peter Snowden at Collateral Journal

[familytherapyblog]

Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends

Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends #narrativetherapy #familytherapy #bookreview

Michael White and David Epston published a book, in 1990, titled Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends. This book is a culmination of the therapeutic work of each of these authors, though much of it was constructed independently (White & Epston, 1990).  Narrative Therapy is considered one of the major models of Marriage and Family Therapy.

Story, Knowledge, and Power

The volume begins by reviewing…

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[junosview]

Podcast Episode 046: Valuing Narrative

Podcast Episode 046: Valuing Narrative

The term narrative is important for many reasons; it is the means by which we recount our lives, the events, emotions and experiences that make up the patchwork of our existence. It is the core of each interpersonal relationship, and it has become a continual theme throughout my working career. The fundamental basis of mental health care is the trust and confidence built through the power of…

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[shrinkrants]

Narrative therapy, as we think of it, is a growing body of ideas and practices that stems from the work of Michael White and David Epston. White’s early published work was based on ideas from Gregory Bateson, which gave it some theoretical overlap with strategic and cybernetic approaches to therapy. Epston, who had encountered the narrative metaphor in studying anthropology, and Cheryl White, who had enthusiasm for this analogy from her readings in feminism encouraged White to use the "story analogy”—the notion that meaning is constituted through the stories we tell and hear concerning our lives. Their advice proved fruitful, so much so that since the early 1990’s narrative has been the central organizing metaphor for this approach to therapy. Therapists who began to use the narrative metaphor in White's and Epston’s sense experienced quite a large shift in their worldview. Instead of trying to solve problems, we began to focus on collaboratively enriching the narratives of people’s lives. We work to bring forth and develop "thick descriptions" or rich, meaningful, multi-stranded stories of those aspects of people’s life narratives that lie outside the influence of problems. Through these alternative stories, people can live out new identities, new possibilities for relationship, and new futures.

Jill Freedman & Gene Combs (2009). Narrative Couple Therapy. In A. Gurman & N. Jacobson (eds.) Clinical Handbook of Couple Therapy (revised edition). New York: Guilford.

[shrinkrants]

An insurrection of subjugated knowledges

Foucault was especially interested in how the "truth claims" carried in the " grand abstractions" of modernist science constituted a discourse that dehumanized and objectified many people. He was interested in finding and circulating marginalized discourses that might undermine the power of the modernist scientific discourse. He [in Power/Knowledge pp 80-84] wrote of the "amazing efficacy of discontinuous, particular, and local criticism" in bringing about a "return of knowledge" or "an insurrection of subjugated knowledges" "We are concerned . . . , "he said,

"with the insurrection of knowledges that are opposed . . . to the effects of the centralising powers which are linked to the institution and functioning of an organized scientific discourse within a society such as ours."

Michael White argues that even in the most marginalized and disempowered of lives there is always "lived experience" that lies outside the domain of the dominant stories that have marginalized and disempowered those lives. He and David Epston, along with others, have developed ways of thinking and working that are based on bringing forth the "discontinuous, particular, and local" stories of individuals and groups and performing meaning on those stories so that they can be part of an effective "insurrection of subjugated knowledges," an insurrection that lets people inhabit and lay claim to the many possibilities for their lives that lie beyond the pale of the dominant narratives."

- Jill Freedman and Gene Combs, (1996). Narrative Therapy: The social construction of preferred realities. New York, Norton. pp. 39 & 40.

[shrinkrants]

The instigators of what I refer to on this blog as narrative therapy. Michael White and David Epston. Neither of them would want it to become an ossified set of practices. I think this picture of them in their youth captures the spirit of adventure they inspire me toward.