Sunday, August 3, 2014

Chapter 15 Narrative Therapy

Narrative Therapy is most closely associated with Michael White and David Epston. Narrative Therapists are not focused on what motivates people. Rather, they are focused on an individual's story. The therapists work with clients to create meaning from the clients stories. The stories are comprised of experiences and interactions with others. Clients have multiple selves, and expressions change from situation to situation. The goal of Narrative Therapy is to take the story that the client has told and make what they can out of it. The goal is to deconstruct the problem stories and then make new, more desirable, stories.

In a K-12 setting this approach is pretty idealistic. However, with a mature student it could work well. A student who has great self control and ethics would benefit from this approach. If a student had a "story" of doing drugs and making bad choices, the student is probably labeled the "bad student." That is obviously a dominant story. According to this approach it would be the student's responsibility to make new choices and in turn make new dominant stories, to be labeled a "good kid."

Video:  Narrative Session with Dr. Madigan and David about Frustration
In this video the client is trying to do well and it seems like there is not any room for a mistake. He often gets frustrated and mad. The counselor points out the things that he does to not be frustrated, such as soccer. And the boy agreed but said that he can't understand something he finds completely boring, like history. He cant understand and focus on this subject in particular because it is of no interest to him. The boredom then leads to frustration.The counselor points out that the characters themselves aren't boring but perhaps the way the story is told is what makes the subject boring. The counselor used Narrative Therapy in a very literal sense and asked the boy to literally write a new story. He can take the information and write a new story, to make homework more exciting.

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